Cascadia Earthquake Aritcle

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Wapiti

Joined
Sep 25, 1999
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You may have seen this, but if not, a pretty good read.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one

Also of interests are the many west coast media (Oregonian, Seattle papers, etc.) responses to this article. Some of the public comments at the bottom are pure classic.

Interesting that is is getting so much traction as of late, almost trendy.

Something many of us have been pointing out for years. And have often been scoffed at.

Turns out we might not be as crazy as we were told all these years.
Well, still crazy, just a bit more "acceptably-crazy", maybe.

Brome
 
One of the nice things about all of this is that it has my wife thinking seriously about emergency preparedness. We are making a serious effort to get ourselves better prepared for an emergency.
 
Thanks for the link. :thumbup:

I'm pretty fatalistic about this. I bought a house near Seattle a few years ago. It's where my wife and I plan to retire next year. I was born and raised in Southern California so I know something about earthquakes and earthquake preparedness. I'm also aware that the Cascadia subduction zone is no joke! I became aware of it as the result of a TV special. It might have been a Nova presentation on PBS . . . I just can't remember for sure. They had video of the ghost forest described in the article and they discussed the resulting tsunami in Japan. They even had a picture of the page the tsunami was recorded on in 1700. Stellar journalism!

The first thing I did when I bought my home was bolt it to the foundation. The home was built in the 50's and bolting homes to their foundations wasn't a code requirement back then. I also purchased earthquake insurance to protect my investment to the greatest degree possible. But if a major (9.0+) event occurs, all bets are off . . . including my ability to survive it. At least I'm aware of the risk I'm taking and I'm willing to accept it to be able to live and die where I want to.
 
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Glad to hear it, abbydaddy.

Very similar to our home.
Something that was kind of tolerated as one of my hobbies in the past, has now become more of a part of my family's discussions about travel, the budget, etc.

Kind of refreshing.

(by the way, I really like your platypus idea in your sig line...always have loved the critter, and never know what to say when people ask me if I am a "duck" or "beaver", since I am not a big sports follower-permission to use that?)

bld522, hey at least you are informed and making the best of your situation. Ultimately I think that is all we can do. We all have different situations and have to work within them.
And that will be a beautiful place to retire.
 
Thanks again. My home is situated across the street from a green belt and two houses away from a trailhead that leads down to the Sound. My best friend from college lives 11 minutes away. I can't wait to get there.

It is funny, though. When I was considering where I wanted to retire, Seattle wasn't my first choice primarily because I didn't want to jump from the frying pan into the fire, seismically speaking. But you know, I've had a good life and if it's my turn to go, then it's my turn to go. At least I'll be surrounded by beauty and not the urban crush of Los Angeles when the party's over.
 
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Good link. I was in the 89 Loma Prieta earthquake. I'm still terrified of earthquakes. Scared to go back to the west coast honestly.
 
I understand. But then I'm not real crazy about tornadoes or hurricanes either. And then there's that mini ice-age coming in 2030 and the massive supervolcano lurking out your back door and gamma ray bursters and asteroids and comets and solar flares and climate change and bird flu and . . . Oh Lordy! What's a soul to do? :eek:

There's no getting around Mother Nature. To paraphrase a famous Tennessee Ernie Ford song, if her right hand don't get you then her left one will. Might as well kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.
 
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Really frightening article and I think it essentially speaks truth. Obviously the size of the future quake is variable and the amount of damage extremely variable. But it will happen and it's time for it to happen. I'm glad I don't live there. Really big quake potential is the main reason beyond basic economics that I have always not looked to the west coast for employment.

People get bits and pieces to the whole puzzle, but the scope of the disaster is almost un-imagineable in terms of people. I think the death estimate is greatly understated.
 
Wapiti said:
Glad to hear it, abbydaddy.

Very similar to our home.
Something that was kind of tolerated as one of my hobbies in the past, has now become more of a part of my family's discussions about travel, the budget, etc.

Kind of refreshing.

(by the way, I really like your platypus idea in your sig line...always have loved the critter, and never know what to say when people ask me if I am a "duck" or "beaver", since I am not a big sports follower-permission to use that?)

bld522, hey at least you are informed and making the best of your situation. Ultimately I think that is all we can do. We all have different situations and have to work within them.
And that will be a beautiful place to retire.
Click to expand...

Absolutely use Platypus away! I got my undergrad at UO and I'm in grad school at OSU now, so I needed to come up with something.

The other school I was considering was UW, then I would have been a Dusky. I decided I would rather be a Platypus.

Plus, I also am not big into sports in general. I am a lifelong Seahawks fan (like my father before me), but my sports fandom has never spread beyond the NFL, and even in the NFL the less often a team plays the Seahawks the less I know about them.

Great user name by the way.
 
bld522 said:
Thanks again. My home is situated across the street from a green belt and two houses away from a trailhead that leads down to the Sound. My best friend from college lives 11 minutes away. I can't wait to get there.

It is funny, though. When I was considering where I wanted to retire, Seattle wasn't my first choice primarily because I didn't want to jump from the frying pan into the fire, seismically speaking. But you know, I've had a good life and if it's my turn to go, then it's my turn to go. At least I'll be surrounded by beauty and not the urban crush of Los Angeles when the party's over.
Click to expand...

The possibility of a major subduction quake has been on my mind since the Nisqually Quake in 2001. I was living in Seattle at the time, and that was a pretty big one. It really exposed the fact that there is a lot of liquefaction prone areas in Seattle especially, including downtown/waterfront thanks to the Denny Regrade when they washed Denny Hill into the sound in order to make more land. That was what damaged the Viaduct that they are just finally replacing.
 
I'd consider moving to the NW after the earthquake. Perhaps the regional problems of traffic congestion, urban sprawl, light pollution, and skyrocketing housing prices will abate. :thumbup:
 
I am surprised this thread hasn't generated a lot more comments. I can only guess, but the impact to the country as a whole would be significant if the worst case event happened in the Pacific Northwest. Been looking at maps and I'm a bit fuzzy on the areas where a large tidal wave would move and impact directly. As far as damage goes, the article states anything west of I-5 will suffer significant damage. That is a very large area and includes some major cities.

I read where the Russian scientist wants to nuke Yellowstone Park and the 'San Andreas fault area of CA in an attempt to cause the super volcano in Yellowstone to activate or a major earthquake in CA.
 
The New Screen Savers( https://twit.tv/shows/new-screen-savers/episodes/12?autostart=false ) had a segment on Saturday (starting at 43:25) with a seismologist who gave the impression that the New Yorker article was a bit over the top. The tsunami will do damage on the coast and up rivers but not all the way to I-5. Some seismologists think the interval between 'big ones' is closer to 500 years than the 250 or so from the New Yorker. The Cascadia Subduction Zone was not recently discovered though the correlation of Japanese records and Native American lore is.

I was back in New York City working on the eleventh floor of an old building when it was in that papers that ConEd - the utility company - had discovered a fault line running through Manhatten. Several on the biggest quakes in the US have been in New England and Missouri, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_the_United_States. That's more scary, to me, than living in NorCal where earthquake awareness at least has some effect on building codes. Fire season in the Summer and a big tree coming down through the house (happened four years ago) in a winter storm are of more concern for me.

I've been thinking of re-locating to the Pacific Northwest because I'm tired of the water shortages and fire danger here. This article in the New Yorker has given me pause about living right on the coast but not too much.
 
cardo said:
The New Screen Savers( https://twit.tv/shows/new-screen-savers/episodes/12?autostart=false ) had a segment on Saturday (starting at 43:25) with a seismologist who gave the impression that the New Yorker article was a bit over the top. The tsunami will do damage on the coast and up rivers but not all the way to I-5. Some seismologists think the interval between 'big ones' is closer to 500 years than the 250 or so from the New Yorker. The Cascadia Subduction Zone was not recently discovered though the correlation of Japanese records and Native American lore is.
Click to expand...

I kind of figured that the hills along the coast would block any "normal" sized tidal wave. Of course, the water would move up the rivers that empty into the Pacific Ocean. Subduction zones in general were only really identified in the late 60's and 70's. Prior to that, it was all speculation. Wegner first proposed the hypothesis in 1912 and then published a book/paper in 1915 (commonly referred to as continental drift). But it was not until supporting science or data became available (paleomagnetism) that the hypothesis started to become theory in the 50's. Sea floor spreading was a 60's concept. You add all those things together along with a huge amount of research and you have the accepted concept of plate tectonics as a world wide fact.
 
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The bottom line is, life isn't safe. Everything needs to be measured in terms of risk/reward tradeoff. At my age, the reward of moving to Seattle is worth the risk. But I'm not alone in this. I have a wife to consider. So I've been spending the last several days acquainting her with the danger. I e-mailed her a copy of the New Yorker magazine article and we watched the BBC and National Geographic videos on YouTube yesterday. She has the information she needs to make an informed decision now and I told her that she's in the driver's seat. If she's not willing to move to Seattle, neither am I.
 
Its too dangerous, stay in California! Why does every Californian want to retire here rather than stay in their man made paradise?
 
As an Emergency Manager it was interesting watching the buzz that article created...
Also interesting to read her follow up.

It IS all about preparedness, and building a resilient infrastructure for future generations - as, according to experts, there is around a 70% chance it will NOT happen in the next 50 years - and truly enhancing our infrastructure is a decades-long effort.

Besides; preparedness is a lifestyle resilient to all hazards!

EMP anyone...? :eek: :D

Cheers,
8
 
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