Researchers at Oregon State University say bridges and roads in the northwestern resort city of Seaside should be prioritized for improvement after a simulation discovered they would have higher mortality rates in an earthquake and tsunami.

Researchers found that the bridge on Broadway Street over Neawanna Creek would result in the most fatalities, The Daily Astorian reported.

“The real issue with Broadway is there is really nowhere else to go. But by the time you get to that bridge you have very little time to do anything else,” said Dan Cox, an Oregon State civil engineer who created the model with Haizhong Wang. “It’s a combination of what options you have and how much time you have to do it.”

The two bridges on 12th Street, the bridge on Sundquist Road and Ocean Vista Drive in the Cove were also flagged for improvement.

The bridges and roads are high priorities to retrofit because of relative proximity to areas where people live and gather, making them some of the most populated evacuation routes, researchers said. They also fall in the path of where tsunami inundation would most likely occur.

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