Jeremy Linder

One of the many benefits of living here on the Oregon Coast is being close to the ocean beaches. In fact, many buyers move here for that reason alone. There's plenty of upside to being close the beach, and fortunately most of the beaches here are accessible by foot or car making it even easier to get out and enjoy the pounding surf and damp salt air. However there's always a trade off, and in this case being close to the beach means if a tsunami comes you'd better have a better plan than grabbing your favorite surfboard and loading up the Hawaii Five-0 theme song in your Ipod. 

I'm often asked if a specific house or property is in a tsunami zone, or if I think a tsunami could reach the property in question. My usual response is I don't know, but here's where you check it out. I don't know much about the Oregon Coast Tsunami Hazards Program, and you'd think I should... But the map searching on the website is awesome, allowing you to see if a specific property is located in a tsunami hazard area and where the nearest safe place would be. I also recommend you check out your place of work as well, there's a good chance if a tsunami were to approach the coast it would be during work hours. A side note about tsunami's: I've lived on the Oregon Coast pretty much my entire life, and don't think much about tsunami's or what could be impacted if one hit close by. After looking at the the various tsunami maps for Astoria, Seaside and Cannon Beach I'm actually surprised how big the hazard area is. I don't know what factors the folks that are clearly much smarter than me use to construct these maps but it's an eye opener for sure. With that said, I'm not going to worry much about tsunami's because I can't control if or when one might happen. All I can do is make a plan just in case, and you should too. 

Another issue we deal with locally on occasion is geological hazards, aka slides. There's been a lot of coverage of the slides in Astoria in recent years, most recently with the slide that happened about 3 years ago near 1st & Commercial Streets. I tend to think of slides more in terms of heavy rain and poor soil conditions or maybe some nearby construction that disturbs the ground, but what would a tsunami do to already vulnerable ocean front properties in South County (Arcadia Beach, Falcon Cove, Tolovana /Cannon Beach and Silver Point)? I'm not geologist, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night so I won't take a guess. But if I were to take a guess I'd say the areas that already slid or have shown movement could be in trouble. Recently the fine folks at DOGAMI released some maps of South County that show coastal erosion hazard zones, and where we could see trouble in the future. The maps are only available for purchase on CD for $15 as far as I can find. 

I think sometimes when I explain there's a geo-hazard nearby or the potential of a tsunami to a buyer client I might raise concerns that weren't already there and possibly talk somebody out of a purchase. That's clearly not my intent, but I would never talk somebody into making a purchase they did feel comfortable about either- And by guiding a buyer to the information they can research the issue and draw their own conclusions. That's the goal anyway.  

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