Cascadia fault line: How FEMA is planning for a big quake in US northwest

Cascadia fault line: Experts say the northwestern region of the United States is 72 years overdue for a big earthquake, which is expected to be between 8.0 and 9.2 in magnitude. 

|
Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters
In May 2015 massive twin earthquakes in Nepal killed 8,897 people.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning for a mega earthquake that could hit the Pacific Northwest coast at any time, causing extensive catastrophic damage, according to The New Yorker magazine.

Scientists project that sometime this century, the Cascadia fault line will blow and unleash a tsunami-like wave, causing the worst earthquake in the continent's history. The Cascadia subduction zone runs seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, beginning in Northern California and ending near Vancouver Island, Canada.  

Recent research on the Cascadia fault line indicates that the risk of a major earthquake is much higher than previously thought in this zone that spans Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and California.  According to scientists interviewed by The New Yorker, the devastating earthquake will occur in the next 50 years or less.

FEMA predicts that nearly thirteen thousand people will die and another twenty-seven thousand will be injured in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Kathryn Schulz writes that 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.

In Oregon, the state’s emergency management office has kicked off initiatives to coordinate efforts across the state and to educate the public. Last August, the state released  a new book with step-by-step directions aimed at teaching earthquake preparedness to teenagers.

“It will take 50 years for us to prepare for this impending earthquake,” Scott Ashford, Kearney Professor and dean of the Oregon State University College of Engineering, advised US House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management in May. “The time to act is before you have the earthquake. Everybody needs to take some responsibility and start preparing now.”

The Northwest region is putting measures in place to withstand its greatest threat that is predicted to result in significant loss of life and critical infrastructure destruction. "This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” said one FEMA official, The New Yorker reported. 

Over the years, scientists have been working to refine earthquake warning systems. Last year, a warning system created by the US Geological Survey in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich alerted the Seismological Laboratory at Berkeley of the quake that hit California’s Napa Valley five seconds before the initial shaking began, and 10 seconds before peak shaking arrived.

In a more recent development, The Thomson Reuters Foundation reported that scientists have discovered that smartphones could be used as an affordable alternative to sophisticated earthquake monitoring networks. “However the researchers didn't specify if smartphone users would receive warnings through messages, calls, or applications.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Cascadia fault line: How FEMA is planning for a big quake in US northwest
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0716/Cascadia-fault-line-How-FEMA-is-planning-for-a-big-quake-in-US-northwest
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe