Future "Big One" earthquake in Pacific Northwest

HeelInTheOzarks

HeelInTheOzarks

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Years ago I read this article in the New Yorker before a work trip to Seattle and nothing has probably ever scared me more. It's very long but also very eye-opening - basically we have built a region of millions of people who live in an area that is susceptible to be totally destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami, it's just that one hasn't happened since white people have been living there (unlike California which has had many big events during most of our lifetimes). The last big one was in the year 1700. And the history of tsunami records from Japan match up with the physical history from the PNW.
The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest


And today I ran across this NBC article on the same subject
Earthquake scientists are learning warning signs of the 'big one.' When should they tell the public?

Anyone else ever gone down this rabbit hole? Whenever this event actually does happen, it appears the USA is going to have no ability to deal with it at all.
 
That is pretty scary. Don’t we also have a huge, dormant fault in NC that stretches a few states?
 
Yeah I saw a special on the Pacific NW tsunami threat, and how they recreated the last one in the 1700s. Seattle, Vancouver, etc are all Effed when it hits.
 
We just moved out of Seattle back to Nc for family reasons, but this was always in the back of our mind. We had separate earthquake insurance in addition to our home insurance etc.
My recollection is that basically west of I5 would be screwed
 
When the “big one” hits the Cascadia Subduction Zone, pretty much everything west of I-5 gets wiped out in Washington (obviously, not the Olympic Mountains; but not many people live above 3,000-5,000 feet on the Olympic Peninsula). Likely true for Oregon as well.

Buildings (bridges and dams) in the Pacific Northwest are not built to the same earthquake codes as California. Electricity, water, communications, etc. will be hammered. Hospitals will likely collapse into rubble.

Then, the tsunamis.

In May/June 2016, I was in Washington working. Federal, state, and local government agencies were “war/gaming” how they’d respond when the Juan de Fuca plate moves. It’ll likely be 9.5 or higher. The war-gaming didn’t go well. We’re incredibly dependent on cell phones, electrify, running water, sewage treatment, etc.

One seismologist said we’d likely have little-to-no warning. He said the first clue likely will be when all the dogs in your neighborhood start going apeshit simultaneously. When that happens, start running uphill…..running….not driving.

When the earthquake hits, it’ll last for 4-6 minutes - the violence of this earthquake has to do with how smooth Juan de Fuca is compared with many other tectonic plates. The shaking will be so violent people won’t be able to stand.
 
RaiGuy said:
That is pretty scary. Don’t we also have a huge, dormant fault in NC that stretches a few states?
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Yes. It comes out of the Atlantic and runs thru Charleston, Wilmington and up to DC. It was the cause of the earthquake that damaged the Washington Monument several years ago. It also caused an earthquake in the 1880’s that did major damage to Charleston. No place on Earth is immune to earthquakes. Some places are just more susceptible.
 
The thing that was scariest in that New Yorker article was the math showing that a major earthquake has hit the PNW on average every 243 years. And as of the article (2015) we were at 315 years. So now about 324. So we are way overdue for this to happen and we just have to hope we can keep cheating fate.

There is also a fault in SE Missouri/NE Arkansas called the New Madrid fault. There was a 8.0 earthquake in the early 1800s that caused major damage just upriver from Memphis and people have wondered when the next one will be. The expectation is that a lot of Memphis would be leveled by not only the damage but severe flooding of the Mississippi.
 
HeelInTheOzarks said:
Years ago I read this article in the New Yorker before a work trip to Seattle and nothing has probably ever scared me more. It's very long but also very eye-opening - basically we have built a region of millions of people who live in an area that is susceptible to be totally destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami, it's just that one hasn't happened since white people have been living there (unlike California which has had many big events during most of our lifetimes). The last big one was in the year 1700. And the history of tsunami records from Japan match up with the physical history from the PNW.
The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest


And today I ran across this NBC article on the same subject
Earthquake scientists are learning warning signs of the 'big one.' When should they tell the public?

Anyone else ever gone down this rabbit hole? Whenever this event actually does happen, it appears the USA is going to have no ability to deal with it at all.
Click to expand...
Been down this rabbit hole. In the worst case scenario, huge swaths of Seattle are washed away by a combo of water, mud, and liquifaction and a chasm to Hollow Earth bisects Portland, whereupon Ghidorah emerges and destroys every inch of the city. The disaster is inevitable (maybe not Ghidorah), with hope that retrofitting, modern construction techniques, and emergency response systems enacted now can mitigate the casualty rate and months/years of post disaster turmoil.

The New Yorker article obviously doesn't speak to several years of planning since 2015, and gets a substantial credit for scaring many to act in preparation, in the intervening years (though the area wasn't naive prior to the article). For example, Seaside, Oregon, the town from which the interviewed superintendent hailed, consolidated its middle and high schools to a hilltop site. The school-bond property tax increase passed in the year following the article, after previously failing in 2013 (though the tax increase was substantially less, in part b/c a lumbar company donated land).

As a PNW inhabitant, I definitely don't feel prepared, and find it easy to fall into inaction (stunning surroundings and temperate conditions can have that effect). Yes, I have a generator, several days of canned goods, emergency med kits, a reverse osmosis system with a 4-5 day tank, cut down several suspect trees near the house, have cordial to friendly relationships with most of my neighbors, and live in a "holy shit this is shaky" area but not a "I'm not sure which way is up" area. That said, I'm no prepper and few of us truly knows how we'll react to calamity and entropy.
 
Read the article when it came out. The author grew up in Oregon and she is a terrific writer. And the article had a 9.5 impact, though there is only so much which can be done.
Every resident gets a jetpack (with pet pouches_ to fly to higher terrain????
 
Patb78 said:
Yes. It comes out of the Atlantic and runs thru Charleston, Wilmington and up to DC. It was the cause of the earthquake that damaged the Washington Monument several years ago. It also caused an earthquake in the 1880’s that did major damage to Charleston. No place on Earth is immune to earthquakes. Some places are just more susceptible.
Click to expand...
It's not as risky because the Atlantic is growing
 
Back in 2012, my wife (then my fiancée) and I were planning a trip to the Pacific NW. Neither of us had even been. The DNC was coming to Charlotte, and due to that, there would be no court for a week (which helped free me up from my job) and most businesses with offices uptown told their employees not to worry about coming to work that week (which freed my wife up from her job).

We had to abandon our plans to due a medical condition my wife was diagnosed with. We haven’t had a chance to make the trip since then. But after reading this thread, I really wish we went then because this thread has made me scared shitless of going now.
 
heelslegup said:
The good news for Pacific NW is that when Yellowstone Caldera blows up, most of the immedidate catastropic effects will be to the East and South IIRC
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This is how I sleep at night; “lord, thank you for keeping me safe in the immediate aftermath of the any-day-now Yellowstone supervolcano.”

Now, the little ice age and famine to follow, I’ll have a quibble.
 
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