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The Trump administration has canceled billions of dollars in federal grants across multiple agencies, and one of those grants is for a program that was designed to help local governments fortify places that are vulnerable to natural disasters. NPR's Katia Riddle reports from Astoria, Oregon, on the impact of those federal cuts to one hospital.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: Eight years ago, Erik Thorsen got some bad news. He's the CEO of a small hospital in Oregon. A number of experts and engineers from the state came to meet with him and other leaders of hospitals on the coast.
ERIK THORSEN: And they basically said, none of you are prepared for a major natural disaster from the Cascadia subduction zone.
RIDDLE: His hospital, called Columbia Memorial, was built decades ago. Now that we know more about earthquakes, it's hard to imagine a worse spot to build a hospital. Not only is the whole town in a major subduction zone, the building is just a few blocks from the water, on top of dangerously unstable ground.
THORSEN: So the theory is, if the earthquake happened, that ground underneath us would liquefy and the building would potentially collapse.
RIDDLE: If they manage to stay standing through the earthquake, they'll have another problem.
THORSEN: If we happen to remain upright and a tsunami comes our way, maybe we get 20 to 30 minutes of notice to evacuate people up the hill.
RIDDLE: After that meeting, Thorsen got to work fundraising to fortify his hospital for a seismic event.
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RIDDLE: On this recent day, construction workers are busy anchoring the hospital's new foundation, drilling holes more than 60 feet into the ground. Hundreds of piles will anchor the building and keep it intact during an earthquake. Right now, the hospital is just sitting on top of the soil.
THORSEN: Sixty-five-foot-tall drill bit is drilling down to the bedrock. And they just started...
RIDDLE: It's a ginormous drill.
THORSEN: (Laughter) That is over a hundred feet tall, that drill, in total.
RIDDLE: It took years to raise the money to renovate the hospital. The entire budget is roughly $300 million. A critical part of that funding was promised to them from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Thorsen and his team were awarded about $14 million in federal money to help them build something called a vertical evacuation zone in the hospital. Outside, Thorsen describes what it will look like when it's done.
THORSEN: The building is 97 feet, and the helipad sits on the roof. So it's probably going to be close to the level of those three houses that are back there.
RIDDLE: The idea is that after an earthquake, with the hospital still standing, people inside would safely move up to these top levels and avoid the tsunami. Community members could also shelter here. But in April, the Trump administration canceled the federal program that granted them the money. It's called BRIC - Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities.
SUZANNE BONAMICI: It's just incredibly frustrating.
RIDDLE: Democratic Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici represents this area. After the Trump administration canceled the program, the decision was legally challenged. Now the money is tied up in court. Recipients like this hospital still haven't been able to access any of the funds they were promised. Bonamici says she and her staff have been pleading with anyone who will listen to help them get the money going again.
BONAMICI: I lost count of how many calls I have made trying to get somebody from FEMA on the phone.
RIDDLE: FEMA did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Bonamici says this issue is relevant to everyone who lives in this community.
BONAMICI: You can't outrun a tsunami, so this hospital will be a safe place. It will save lives. It will save property. And it is really critical that now that they're underway with construction that this funding comes through.
RIDDLE: The idea of saving people in a tsunami by vertically evacuating rather than trying to outrun it is not new. Some other earthquake-prone places like Japan have already built structures like these. Oregon is just getting started, says Chris Goldfinger. He studies paleoseismology at Oregon State University.
CHRIS GOLDFINGER: We're sitting here on, you know, the overused phrase, ticking time bomb.
RIDDLE: A magnitude 9 earthquake, says Goldfinger, is a realistic possibility here.
GOLDFINGER: Those happen on average just under 500 years. And we're 325 years since the last one.
RIDDLE: At least 25,000 people could die in this scenario, according to some estimates. A few other places in the Pacific Northwest have built these kinds of structures. Goldfinger says they're hard to finance without federal support.
GOLDFINGER: The federal government is really the only entity that's large enough to really deal with this as a national-level problem. It's just well beyond anything the states could do alone.
RIDDLE: Astoria is a logging and fishing town, as well as a tourist destination. It's also a rare politically purplish place in the United States. Willis Van Dusen was mayor here for more than two decades and helped raise funds for the hospital project. He's a registered Republican. Van Dusen says when Trump officials started talking about eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, he was for it.
WILLIS VAN DUSEN: Course there's waste, fraud and abuse.
RIDDLE: So when they first announced these cuts, you thought, great.
VAN DUSEN: Absolutely. This is great. This is what we wanted. This is what Trump ran on. OK, let's go get the waste, fraud and abuse.
RIDDLE: He's sitting in his office, just blocks from the hospital. He says now that the Trump administration is interfering in his town, he sees it differently.
VAN DUSEN: What is more important than a hospital in a rural community like Astoria? Now, it saved my life.
RIDDLE: Van Dusen points to a framed photocopy of a piece of paper - the EKG reading when he had a heart attack some years ago. At one point, he flatlined.
VAN DUSEN: All these are (imitating electric current), and they're hitting the paddles. And I had actually died.
RIDDLE: It was doctors at Columbia Memorial that brought him back. Van Dusen says he and many other people in Astoria wouldn't be here without this hospital. Making sure that it can keep providing care during an earthquake and a tsunami, he says, is the opposite of waste, fraud and abuse.
VAN DUSEN: And just to jerk that money away from us, I can't just say it makes - it's frustrating. It makes me livid. It makes me angry.
RIDDLE: Van Dusen says he's not the only one in this town who's mad.
VAN DUSEN: I know every single Republican that I have talked to is livid over what's happening.
RIDDLE: Back at the project's headquarters, hospital CEO Erik Thorsen says they are not giving up, even without the federal money.
THORSEN: We're fighting as hard, I think, as we can fight to try to restore the BRIC grant funds. And unfortunately, FEMA, even prior to the shutdown, had kind of gone silent on us and now, with the shutdown, very silent on us.
RIDDLE: With this size of a project, says Thorsen, it's impossible to just pause while the courts make a decision about the money or the government reopens. They've been thinking through other ways to finance it.
THORSEN: There's nothing as significant as a BRIC grant, though, that we've uncovered so far.
RIDDLE: For the moment, says Thorsen, they're proceeding as planned - still building the vertical evacuation structure, trying to think creatively.
THORSEN: We have this obligation to make sure that our patients and our residents and citizens are safe. And that's been the driving force behind, really, the project.
RIDDLE: After all, says Thorsen, what else is government for, if not to protect people from natural disasters? Katia Riddle, NPR News, Astoria, Oregon.
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