Portland Bureau of Emergency Management

The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management

Introduction

PBEM Community Resilience Team (CPT)

Community Resilience Flagship Programs

CPT Trainers

CPRT Funding

Programming Governing Laws and Codes

Back to Main Guidelines ↱

THIS PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

History of the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management

Portland Civil Defense

Civil defense drill inside Kelly Butte in 1960. Photo courtesy of the Oregon History Project.

Load video

YouTube

YouTube might collect personal data. Privacy Policy

ContinueDismiss

Video: The Day Called X

In a sense, PBEM's history began in 1956 with Portland constructing the Civil Defense Emergency Operation Center. According to the Oregon History Project:

In 1956, Portland became the first city in the United States to build an underground city hall, the Civil Defense Emergency Operation Center, at Kelly Butte, six and a half miles southeast of the city. It was intended to house 250 emergency coordinators for two weeks. From the underground, they could direct city and emergency services in the event of a nuclear war. It was protected from nuclear fallout by twenty-six inch walls of reinforced concrete, buried ten to thirty feet below the hillside.

Technical operations equipment cached there included a huge map of Portland, telephones, and telegraph. There was also a special radio to broadcast warnings and establish contact with all government response agencies within a thirty-mile radius without disclosing the signal’s location of origin to enemy planes. In addition, microfilm files of 100 years worth of Portland deeds and other records were stored there.

Although the main focus of civil defense was preparation for the looming Cold War threat of nuclear weapons — a contingency which never materialized — trained civil defense teams sometimes responded to natural disasters and other emergencies. Civil defense drills, a regular occurrence throughout the 1950s and 1960s, ranged from elaborate, multi-agency mock air raids to elementary school “duck and cover” drills.

Portland moved away from broad civil defense planning in the early 1960s after Senator Wayne Morse declared such efforts a hoax that lulled people into feeling falsely secure. In the early 1980s, during the Reagan years, civil defense re-emerged as an issue. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) coordinated a controversial Crisis Relocation Plan with state and local agencies. It involved evacuating metropolitan Portland to rural areas. In addition to being poorly organized, critics said the plan would increase the likelihood of a nuclear holocaust by making people believe that a nuclear war might be fought, won, and survived.

Portland's Civil Defense agency was featured in a mock nuclear attack response film called "The Day Called X" (sometimes titled "A Day Called X"). The City mothballed the Kelly Butte bunker in 1994, and permanently sealed it in 2006. Interested armchair historians can go deep into the weeds to learn more about the bunker (which included a mural painted by Henk Pander and is still there although buried); PBEM recommends these blog entries:

• Atlas Obscura, Kelly Butte Civil Defense Center;
• Fat Pencil Studio, Reconstructing the Kelly Butte Bunker;
• Portland historian Jeff Felker's blog, The Kelly Butte 911 Call Center.

Portland Office of Emergency Management (POEM)

Relevant Documents	Notes
Ordinance 178616	2004.07.21, established the Portland Office of Emergency Management
2004 Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan	2004.11.14, first major plan produced from POEM.
Ordinance 181352	2007.10.10, significant updates to code governing POEM.

The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management originated in July 2003 as a special unit in Portland Fire & Rescue. Funds from the Department of Homeland Security helped establish local emergency management offices, nationwide. Portland City Council consolidated all emergency management functions into a single bureau, the Portland Office of Emergency Management, by ordinance on July 21, 2004. The first Director was Miguel Ascarrunz, appointed in November 2003.

Historic Disasters in the Portland Metro Area

News clipping following the 1964 Columbus Day Storm in the Portland area.

View from Jeremy Van Keuren's office on December 11, 2014 during the windstorm. Metal sheeting broke off the PacWest building and struck the side of the Standard Insurance building.

Event	Day 1 Date
1700 Cascadia Earthquake	1700.01.26
Great Flood of 1861-1862	1861.12.05
Great Fire of 1873	1873.08.02
Portland Flood of 1876	1874.06.24
Great Gale of 1880	1880.01.09
Willamette River Flood of 1894	1894.06.05
1931 Dust Storm	1931.04.21
1948 Columbia River flood (Vanport)	1948.05.30
Columbus Day Storm of 1962	1962.10.12
Christmas Flood of 1964	1964.12.18
1972 Vancouver Tornado	1972.04.05
United Airlines Flight 173	1978.12.28
Eruption of Mount St. Helens	1980.03.27
Friday the 13th Windstorm	1981.11.13
1993 Scotts Mills earthquake	1993.03.25
1995 Windstorm	1995.12.12
Willamette Valley Flood of 1996	1996.02.05
December 2014 Windstorm	2014.12.11
COVID-19 Pandemic in Portland	2020.02.28
George Floyd Demonstrations	2020.05.28
2021 Heat Dome

History of Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs)

Load video

Vimeo

Vimeo might collect personal data. Privacy Policy

ContinueDismiss

Video: The History of CERT

Portland Fire & Rescue staff contributed to the development of a national Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program. The Portland version, Neighborhood Emergency Teams (NET), was the third CERT program in the country.