Portland Bureau of Emergency Management
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THIS PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
History of the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management
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.[1]
Portland's Civil Defense agency was featured in a mock 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:
- 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.
The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management originated in 2003 as a special unit in Portland Fire & Rescue. Funds from the Department of Homeland Security helped establish local emergency management offices, nationwide.
Historic Disasters in the Portland Metro Area
x under construction x
| 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 [3] | 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[4][5] | 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)
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.
Notes and References
- ↑ Civil Defense Underground Headquarters. (n.d.). Oregon History Project. https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/civil-defense-underground-headquarters/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- ↑ Wikipedia contributors. (2024, November 22). Kelly Butte natural area. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Butte_Natural_Area
- ↑ See also from OPB: 130 years ago, the Great Flood of 1894 left Portland waterlogged for weeks
- ↑ 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
- ↑ See also: Classic windstorm of December 11, 2014. (n.d.). https://climate.washington.edu/stormking/December2014.html
