FEMA promised funds to tsunami-proof an Oregon hospital. That money is MIA
toggle caption Jay Fram for NPR
Eight years ago, Erik Thorsen — CEO of Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria, Ore. — received a warning that no hospital administrator wants to hear: A big earthquake could cause his hospital's building to collapse. His staff and his patients could die in a matter of moments.
"They basically said, 'None of you are prepared for a major natural disaster from the Cascadia subduction zone,'" recalls Thorsen.
The Cascadia subduction zone is an earthquake-prone region that stretches about 700 miles from California to British Columbia. Thorsen's hospital sits right along it — which is why a team of experts and engineers from the state had come to talk to him and other leaders from coastal hospitals about earthquake risk.
Alarmed, Thorsen — who grew up in this area, left for college, and then returned to raise his family here — got to work fundraising and planning in order to fortify his hospital to withstand an earthquake and provide shelter during a tsunami.
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A critical part of the project's $300 million budget was to come from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Their $14 million grant would help to build a tsunami evacuation zone in the hospital.
But in April, the Trump administ
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