|[[wikipedia:Great_Flood_of_1862#Oregon|Great Flood of 1861-1862]]
|[[wikipedia:Great_Flood_of_1862#Oregon|Great Flood of 1861-1862]]
|1861.12.05
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|-
|1873.08.02
|[[wikipedia:Great_Fire_of_1873|Great Fire of 1873]]
|[[wikipedia:Great_Fire_of_1873|Great Fire of 1873]]
|1873.08.02
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|-
|1874.06.24
|[https://portland.daveknows.org/2011/06/24/june-24-1876-flood-waters-reach-second-street-in-portland/ Portland Flood of 1876]
|[https://portland.daveknows.org/2011/06/24/june-24-1876-flood-waters-reach-second-street-in-portland/ Portland Flood of 1876]
|1874.06.24
|
|-
|-
|1880.01.09
|[[wikipedia:Great_Gale_of_1880|Great Gale of 1880]]
|[[wikipedia:Great_Gale_of_1880|Great Gale of 1880]]
|1880.01.09
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|-
|-
|1894.06.05
|[https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/willamette_flood_1894_/ Willamette River Flood of 1894] <ref>'''See also''' from OPB: ''[https://www.opb.org/article/2024/05/30/oregon-experience-130-years-ago-great-flood-1894-portland/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery 130 years ago, the Great Flood of 1894 left Portland waterlogged for weeks]''</ref>
|[https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/willamette_flood_1894_/ Willamette River Flood of 1894] <ref>'''See also''' from OPB: ''[https://www.opb.org/article/2024/05/30/oregon-experience-130-years-ago-great-flood-1894-portland/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery 130 years ago, the Great Flood of 1894 left Portland waterlogged for weeks]''</ref>
|[https://portlandweather.com/weather-headlines/130 1995 Windstorm]<ref>'''See also:''' Oregonian/OregonLive, S. T. |. (2015, December 12). 20 years later: Dec. 12, 1995, windstorm ranks second only to Columbus Day Storm of 1962. ''Oregonlive''. https://www.oregonlive.com/weather/2015/12/20_years_later_december_12_199.html</ref><ref>'''See also:''' ''Classic windstorm of December 11, 2014''. (n.d.). https://climate.washington.edu/stormking/December2014.html</ref>
|[https://portlandweather.com/weather-headlines/130 1995 Windstorm]<ref>'''See also:''' Oregonian/OregonLive, S. T. |. (2015, December 12). 20 years later: Dec. 12, 1995, windstorm ranks second only to Columbus Day Storm of 1962. ''Oregonlive''. https://www.oregonlive.com/weather/2015/12/20_years_later_december_12_199.html</ref><ref>'''See also:''' ''Classic windstorm of December 11, 2014''. (n.d.). https://climate.washington.edu/stormking/December2014.html</ref>
|1995.12.12
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|-
|-
|1996.02.05
|[[wikipedia:Willamette_Valley_flood_of_1996|Willamette Valley Flood of 1996]]
|[[wikipedia:Willamette_Valley_flood_of_1996|Willamette Valley Flood of 1996]]
|1996.02.05
|
|-
|-
|2008.12.14
|[https://www.oregonlive.com/news/erry-2018/12/0e131ca88d8678/10-years-later-the-2008-blizza.html 2008 Major Snowstorm]
|[https://www.oregonlive.com/news/erry-2018/12/0e131ca88d8678/10-years-later-the-2008-blizza.html 2008 Major Snowstorm]
|2008.12.14
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|-
|Influenza A-H1N1 Pandemic in Portland
|2009.06.06
|2009.06.06
|[[wikipedia:2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_the_United_States_by_state#Oregon|Influenza A-H1N1 Pandemic in Portland]]
The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management (PBEM) is the City of Portland's enterprise emergency management agency. It was established as a City bureau in 2004, and the Portland NET program was included as part of PBEM's portfolio.
Over the years, PBEM has invested time and resources in three primary mission areas:
Planning: Expand and maintain a complete suite of disaster mitigation, response, and recovery plans. This mission area also includes collaborating with other City bureaus on Continuity of Operations Plans (COOP), which describes how individual bureaus will get services to Portlanders back on line after a major disruption or disaster.
Operations: Advance readiness of Portland's Emergency Operations Center (EOC). PBEM staff are responsible for maintaining the EOC and ensuring it is ready to activate at a moment's notice. This mission area also includes the Duty Officer program. PBEM Duty Officers are trained to activate the EOC for major emergencies and planned events. Duty Officers also monitor major emergency incidents and coordinate information sharing and operations between bureaus and Portland elected officials.
Community Programming: Aims to inspire a culture of disaster resilience and preparedness. This mission area includes promoting a whole community approach to preparedness and integrating emergency management into broader community-oriented goals (such as disaster hubs). This mission area is managed by PBEM's Community Preparedness Team.
PBEM is led by a Director who reports to the Public Safety Service Area (PSSA) Deputy City Administrator. PBEM's mission is supported by a small in-house administrative team and administrators in the PSSA.
In a sense, PBEM's history began in 1956 with Portland constructing the Civil Defense Emergency Operation Center. According to the Oregon History Project:
Photo from inside Kelly Butte, December 1957.
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.[1]
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.[2] 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:
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.[3]
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.
The following table lists historic disasters in Portland.
Sometimes called the Portland "World's Fair". 1.8 million visitors arrived in Portland over four months. The emergency management nexus here is not just the crowd, but that the City filled Guild's Lake in NW Portland shortly after the Expo (the Expo took place on an island in Guild's Lake). As a result, Portland's largest industrial neighborhood is built on fill.
A rock music festival held by Gov. Tom McCall to attract counterculture protesters away from downtown Portland, coinciding with a visit from President Richard Nixon. The gambit is credited with ensuring that Portland did not suffer demonstrations as experienced in Chicago, in 1968, during the Democratic National Convention.
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.
