ASTORIA, Ore. — Residents of this small coastal city in the Pacific Northwest know what to do when there’s a tsunami warning: Flee to higher ground. For those in or near Columbia Memorial, the city’s only hospital, there will soon be a different plan: Shelter in place. The hospital is building a new facility next door with an on-site tsunami shelter — an elevated refuge atop columns deeply anchored in the ground, where nearly 2,000 people can safely wait out a flood. Oregon needs more shelters like the one that Columbia Memorial is building, emergency managers say. Hospitals in the region are likely to incur serious damage, if not ruin, and could take more than three years to fully recover in the event of a major earthquake and tsunami, according to a state report. Columbia Memorial’s current facility is a single-story building, made of wood a half-century ago, that would likely collapse and sink into the ground or be swallowed by a landslide after a major earthquake or a tsunami, said Erik Thorsen, the hospital’s chief executive. “It is just not built to survive either one of those natural disaster events,” Thorsen said. At least 10 other hospitals along the Oregon coast are in danger as well. So Columbia Memorial leaders proposed building a hospital capable of withstanding an earthquake and landslide, with a tsunami shelter, instead of relocating the facility to higher ground. Residents and state officials supported the plans, and the federal government awarded a $14 million grant…
