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<<In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover* some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people....
In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed....
Thanks to that work, we now know that the Pacific Northwest has experienced forty-one subduction-zone earthquakes in the past ten thousand years. If you divide ten thousand by forty-one, you get two hundred and forty-three, which is Cascadia’s recurrence interval: the average amount of time that elapses between earthquakes. That timespan is dangerous both because it is too long—long enough for us to unwittingly build an entire civilization on top of our continent’s worst fault line—and because it is not long enough. Counting from the earthquake of 1700, we are now three hundred and fifteen years into a two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle....
The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover. The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system. When the Cascadia earthquake begins, there will be, instead, a cacophony of barking dogs and a long, suspended, what-was-that moment before the surface waves arrive. Surface waves are slower, lower-frequency waves that move the ground both up and down and side to side: the shaking, starting in earnest....
Soon after that shaking begins, the electrical grid will fail, likely everywhere west of the Cascades and possibly well beyond. If it happens at night, the ensuing catastrophe will unfold in darkness. In theory, those who are at home when it hits should be safest; it is easy and relatively inexpensive to seismically safeguard a private dwelling. But, lulled into nonchalance by their seemingly benign environment, most people in the Pacific Northwest have not done so. That nonchalance will shatter instantly. So will everything made of glass. Anything indoors and unsecured will lurch across the floor or come crashing down: bookshelves, lamps, computers, cannisters of flour in the pantry. Refrigerators will walk out of kitchens, unplugging themselves and toppling over. Water heaters will fall and smash interior gas lines. Houses that are not bolted to their foundations will slide off—or, rather, they will stay put, obeying inertia, while the foundations, together with the rest of the Northwest, jolt westward. Unmoored on the undulating ground, the homes will begin to collapse.>>
As evidenced by the absence of a Japanese-like, early warning system in the Pacific Northwest, the region's citizens and leaders seemingly are ignorant and indifferent to the looming threat.
Has Seattle media produced a report similar to this candid report from Oregon? The report suggests that Portland, at least, will be devastated.
The New Yorker article was retracted. The other articles are in play. However, I will repeat that most of the damage of a subduction quake off the Pacific Northwest coast will be to just off the coast. This is bad news for Oregon, as they have a more populated coast. Inland areas will suffer damage, but only in older buildings, mainly brick structured. Most of the inland areas will survive , perhaps major damage to older structures. This quake will indeed cause damage inland, but the devastation predicted will not be as bad as some predict. I think Tokyo is a good indicator as to how Seattle and Portland will react in a great subduction quake. However, there is no exact comparison.
<<In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover* some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people....
In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed....
Thanks to that work, we now know that the Pacific Northwest has experienced forty-one subduction-zone earthquakes in the past ten thousand years. If you divide ten thousand by forty-one, you get two hundred and forty-three, which is Cascadia’s recurrence interval: the average amount of time that elapses between earthquakes. That timespan is dangerous both because it is too long—long enough for us to unwittingly build an entire civilization on top of our continent’s worst fault line—and because it is not long enough. Counting from the earthquake of 1700, we are now three hundred and fifteen years into a two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle....
The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover. The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system. When the Cascadia earthquake begins, there will be, instead, a cacophony of barking dogs and a long, suspended, what-was-that moment before the surface waves arrive. Surface waves are slower, lower-frequency waves that move the ground both up and down and side to side: the shaking, starting in earnest....
Soon after that shaking begins, the electrical grid will fail, likely everywhere west of the Cascades and possibly well beyond. If it happens at night, the ensuing catastrophe will unfold in darkness. In theory, those who are at home when it hits should be safest; it is easy and relatively inexpensive to seismically safeguard a private dwelling. But, lulled into nonchalance by their seemingly benign environment, most people in the Pacific Northwest have not done so. That nonchalance will shatter instantly. So will everything made of glass. Anything indoors and unsecured will lurch across the floor or come crashing down: bookshelves, lamps, computers, cannisters of flour in the pantry. Refrigerators will walk out of kitchens, unplugging themselves and toppling over. Water heaters will fall and smash interior gas lines. Houses that are not bolted to their foundations will slide off—or, rather, they will stay put, obeying inertia, while the foundations, together with the rest of the Northwest, jolt westward. Unmoored on the undulating ground, the homes will begin to collapse.>>
As evidenced by the absence of a Japanese-like, early warning system in the Pacific Northwest, the region's citizens and leaders seemingly are ignorant and indifferent to the looming threat.
Has Seattle media produced a report similar to this candid report from Oregon? The report suggests that Portland, at least, will be devastated.
The New Yorker article was retracted. The other articles are in play. However, I will repeat that most of the damage of a subduction quake off the Pacific Northwest coast will be to just off the coast. This is bad news for Oregon, as they have a more populated coast. Inland areas will suffer damage, but only in older buildings, mainly brick structured. Most of the inland areas will survive , perhaps major damage to older structures. This quake will indeed cause damage inland, but the devastation predicted will not be as bad as some predict. I think Tokyo is a good indicator as to how Seattle and Portland will react in a great subduction quake. However, there is no exact comparison.
My post 44 has the updated Seattle USGS seismic hazard map, comprehending all known earthquake risks including a subduction quake. As I noted, large swaths of Seattle face the risk of very damaging earthquakes.
If you read The New Yorker article, the problem presented by a subduction quake is the potentially long duration of the event.
The New Yorker article was NOT retracted. It was corrected (see the end of the article), with the corrected version still available on the New Yorker website, which would not be the case if it had been retracted.
Sorry, but I'm much more interested in the USGS conclusions and The New Yorker article than your unsubstantiated opinions. The New Yorker article did explain that several different subduction quakes were possible and it sounds as if some pose more danger to Seattle than one that would be limited to the more southern section of the Cascadia fault.
You've offered no substantiation for your argument that Seattle would suffer the same experience as Tokyo. This would assume that the quakes were similar in their impact on both Seattle and Tokyo -- distance, severity, etc.; that Tokyo and Seattle have similar soil condition risks; and, most importantly, that Seattle construction standards are as good as those in Tokyo, which I doubt. As noted in The New Yorker article, Americans are not taking the risks sufficiently seriously, not even implementing a state-of-the-art warning system. The Seattle Times article noted that Seattle has stopped requiring vulnerable brick buildings to make improvements.
Was the Space Needle built before Seattle earthquake standards were enhanced? What about other Seattle skyscrapers?
"A devastating heatwave has left more than 1,100 people dead over the past month in India, and photos also show the toll on the country's infrastructure.
Temperatures in the southeastern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telengana have reached 113 degrees in the past two days, The Associated Press reported. More than 1,100 people have reportedly died in the past month from heat-related causes in those two states, with at least 852 dead in Andhra Pradesh."
My post 44 has the updated Seattle USGS seismic hazard map, comprehending all known earthquake risks including a subduction quake. As I noted, large swaths of Seattle face the risk of very damaging earthquakes.
If you read The New Yorker article, the problem presented by a subduction quake is the potentially long duration of the event.
The New Yorker article was NOT retracted. It was corrected (see the end of the article), with the corrected version still available on the New Yorker website, which would not be the case if it had been retracted.
Sorry, but I'm much more interested in the USGS conclusions and The New Yorker article than your unsubstantiated opinions. The New Yorker article did explain that several different subduction quakes were possible and it sounds as if some pose more danger to Seattle than one that would be limited to the more southern section of the Cascadia fault.
You've offered no substantiation for your argument that Seattle would suffer the same experience as Tokyo. This would assume that the quakes were similar in their impact on both Seattle and Tokyo -- distance, severity, etc.; that Tokyo and Seattle have similar soil condition risks; and, most importantly, that Seattle construction standards are as good as those in Tokyo, which I doubt. As noted in The New Yorker article, Americans are not taking the risks sufficiently seriously, not even implementing a state-of-the-art warning system. The Seattle Times article noted that Seattle has stopped requiring vulnerable brick buildings to make improvements.
Was the Space Needle built before Seattle earthquake standards were enhanced? What about other Seattle skyscrapers?
I stated in my post that there is no exact comparison. I was using Tokyo as an example. You can speculate as much as I do. Nobody knows for certain in these possible scenerios.
I stated in my post that there is no exact comparison. I was using Tokyo as an example. You can speculate as much as I do. Nobody knows for certain in these possible scenerios.
You also said The New Yorker article was retracted. Why??? It apparently was not retracted.
You are speculating. I am not. You frequently have said that Tokyo was a good analogy for what will happen in Seattle. Yet you've not substantiated that claim, which makes it at best an uninformed guess.
I'm posting empirically derived estimates of scientists, especially from the USGS, and articles interviewing scientists about the risks.
If I were a Seattle native, I would take warnings to heart, and demand the implementation of the most advance early warning systems, especially as some, according to The New Yorker article, open critical doors, such as to firehouses. Fifteen minutes of advance warning could be crucial if a major earthquake is imminent. I also would demand realistic building codes, and the upgrading or elimination of inadequate buildings.
The Seattle Times article said 15-30,000 lives are at risk from collapsing brick buildings in Seattle, if I remember correctly. Why is this prospect dismissed?
Before Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans newspaper also warned about the inadequacy of the city's levees. It too was ignored, although it never escalated the identified problem into a major political issue. Seattle leaders, and the Seattle Times, seems to be following the same pathway of informed and knowing inaction. I suspect, based on your comments, the Seattle public really doesn't understand the risks and the level of unpreparedness.
Will Portland suffer much more greatly? Likely, but why would that mitigate the risk to Seattle?
"Large parts of Seattle, Portland and Vancouver will crumble"
From CBS Sunday Morning, March 6, 2016.
<<
In fact, scientists say it's a question of when -- not IF -- a devastating earthquake, followed by a huge tsunami, strikes the continental United States, right in the Pacific Northwest.
"This would be like five or six Katrinas all at once, up and down from California to Canada, would be the closest thing I can think of," said Chris Goldfinger, a paleo-seismologist at Oregon State University....
Goldfinger estimates there's a one-in-three chance this quake will strike sometime in the next 50 years.
"We're not completely unprepared, but we're pretty darn close," he said. "On a scale of one to ten, we're probably a little shy of one at this point....
Dahler asked Ken Murphy, the Administrator for Region X of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "Is FEMA ready for the Big One?"
"I would never say we are ready," he replied.
The agency has spent years preparing the federal response to an earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest. FEMA's best-case scenario: 10,000 dead. And that's assuming no beach tourists, which would lead to their worst-case scenario -- simply too terrifying to contemplate.
The quake could displace a million people from northern California to southern Canada. Large parts of Seattle, Portland and Vancouver will crumble. In coastal towns, roads and bridges will likely be impassable, stranding whole communities. The region's economy could collapse. Rebuilding might take years, even decades."
I estimate the chances of a mega quake hitting the PNW within the next 50 years is more like one-in-two. In the next 50 years I estimate the chances are four-to-one (for). People that live there should be more prepared and take this risk more seriously and start wearing helmets everywhere they go to prevent injuries of which there will be limited medical services available to seek treatment and be able to offer assistance to those that will really need it.
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"Large parts of Seattle, Portland and Vancouver will crumble"
