Earthquake: Northern CA - Page 6

NoelSeven · ‎03-09-2010

THANKS, MK!

@Marienkaefer2 wrote:
I don't know if any of you have read this, but it's a bit sobering (to say the least) for those of us in the PNW:

"Most people in the United States know just one fault line by name: the San Andreas, which runs nearly the length of California and is perpetually rumored to be on the verge of unleashing “the big one.” That rumor is misleading, no matter what the San Andreas ever does. Every fault line has an upper limit to its potency, determined by its length and width, and by how far it can slip. For the San Andreas, one of the most extensively studied and best understood fault lines in the world, that upper limit is roughly an 8.2—a powerful earthquake, but, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, only six per cent as strong as the 2011 event in Japan.

Just north of the San Andreas, however, lies another fault line. Known as the Cascadia subduction zone, it runs for seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, beginning near Cape Mendocino, California, continuing along Oregon and Washington, and terminating around Vancouver Island, Canada. The “Cascadia” part of its name comes from the Cascade Range, a chain of volcanic mountains that follow the same course a hundred or so miles inland. The “subduction zone” part refers to a region of the planet where one tectonic plate is sliding underneath (subducting) another. Tectonic plates are those slabs of mantle and crust that, in their epochs-long drift, rearrange the earth’s continents and oceans. Most of the time, their movement is slow, harmless, and all but undetectable. Occasionally, at the borders where they meet, it is not.

"....If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way—your first two fingers, say—the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6. That’s the big one. If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one."

"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. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America. Roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million. “This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” Murphy says.

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

A Thrill Of Hope The Weary World Rejoices

Justice4all · ‎12-22-2013

Oy! My husband told me about it......

Mona_L · ‎08-07-2014

Seismologists were correct with the prediction of an earthquake within the regions of Indonesia in 2004. With the current prediction of the San Andreas fault, why would anyone want to live on the west coast.

NoelSeven · ‎03-09-2010

@Mona_L wrote:

Seismologists were correct with the prediction of an earthquake within the regions of Indonesia in 2004. With the current prediction of the San Andreas fault, why would anyone want to live on the west coast.

***********************************

They've been predicting "The Big One" any day now since I was a little kid. And no, according to experts, Loma Prieta was NOT the BIG ONE.

Why? Because we don't have to worry about huricanes, tornadoes or floods.

Why? Because most of us think the West Coast is the best place in America to live.

Why? Because we have it all here: mountains, lakes, forests, beautiful deserts for those who love that, and that glorious Pacific Ocean.

Re: CA itself... we are the 8th leading economy in the world. The world. No matter how many times certain groups predict our downfall, it never happens.

That's why.

A Thrill Of Hope The Weary World Rejoices

Marienkaefer2 · ‎03-09-2010

@NoelSeven wrote:
@Mona_L wrote:

Seismologists were correct with the prediction of an earthquake within the regions of Indonesia in 2004. With the current prediction of the San Andreas fault, why would anyone want to live on the west coast.
***********************************

They've been predicting "The Big One" any day now since I was a little kid. And no, according to experts, Loma Prieta was NOT the BIG ONE.

Why? Because we don't have to worry about huricanes, tornadoes or floods.

Why? Because most of us think the West Coast is the best place in America to live.

Why? Because we have it all here: mountains, lakes, forests, beautiful deserts for those who love that, and that glorious Pacific Ocean.

Re: CA itself... we are the 8th leading economy in the world. The world. No matter how many times certain groups predict our downfall, it never happens.

That's why.

***In addition to Noel's most excellent response, I would add: low to little humidity, vast areas of open space, access to some of the best agricultural produce in the world..really local!, giant redwoods, evergreens, old growth forests. I could never live anywhere else. Every place has its risks: tornadoes, hurricanes, frigid winter weather, major snowstorms, hot humid summers. We have none of that.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.--Marcus Tullius Cicero

MarLoCat · ‎09-30-2012

@Mona_L wrote:

Seismologists were correct with the prediction of an earthquake within the regions of Indonesia in 2004. With the current prediction of the San Andreas fault, why would anyone want to live on the west coast.

It's Not just California...for Earthquakes...

~A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words~

Kalli · ‎03-11-2010

That linked article was really scary. If I read correctly, it said we're overdue for the Cascadia scenario. And 1 in 3 chance it will happen in the next 50 years? I don't like those odds. Everything west of I 5 is toast? Yikes! That's a lot of people.