GARIBALDI, OR — The blue-and-white evacuation signs posted along Highway 101 in this Tillamook County fishing town have, for the past six years, directed any survivors of an incoming tsunami to a brick storefront on Mooring Lane that was Coastal Grind Coffee from 2014 until the morning of October 9, 2019, when owner Pat Lavigne taped a handwritten note to the door reading “thanks for everything” and drove to Bend.
The signs have not been updated. Most residents, when asked, say they are aware.
“We figure if the wave comes, we’ll just keep going past it,” said Donna Frese, who has waited tables at the Troller two blocks west since 1998. “Pat’s place was never really the high ground. That was always sort of the joke.”
The Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries lists Garibaldi’s evacuation route as compliant with current standards, which a department spokesperson on Tuesday clarified to mean “the signs are present, legible, and securely fastened to their posts.” The standard does not require the destination to still be there.
Alan Verbeke, who runs a one-man emergency-planning practice out of Newport called Coastline Readiness, said the situation is more common than people realize along this stretch of coast. “You’ve got towns where the route ends at a Dairy Queen, towns where it ends at a vacant lot, towns where it ends at a duplex somebody actually lives in now,” Verbeke said. “Garibaldi’s at least is a building with a door.”
Mayor Tina Kerr said the city has taken up the matter at three council meetings since 2021 without resolution, in part because the next stretch of high ground belongs to a private landowner who has informed the council, in writing, that he would prefer not to host a panicked crowd. A motion to redirect the signage to the Lions Club lot failed in March on the grounds that the Lions Club keeps a chain across it on weekends.
Residents have, in the meantime, made their own arrangements. Charter captain Russ Kohlmann said he plans to drive his pickup up the logging road behind his property. Frese said she will follow the line of cars. Lavigne, reached by phone in Bend on Tuesday afternoon, said he had not realized the signs still pointed to his old shop and seemed, briefly, moved.
The storefront, listed at $189,000 since 2020, is showing this Saturday. The listing agent’s office said attendance is expected to be light.