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Cascadia Subduction and Denial
I know. “Cascadia Subduction and Denial” sounds like the latest twist on PC college campus sexual consent forms, but this is actually about the way we think about risk … and don’t.
I remember watching an online video of the 2011 tsunami coming ashore in Japan. How easily, almost casually, the ocean reached in and swept everything away. And not the rice paper houses that insular or merely wilfully unknowing Americans might have wanted to imagine, but objects of recognizable solidity; big buildings, parking structures, shopping centers, highways, 18 wheelers. Picked up, tumbled, tossed away, gone.
The planet has its own clock that ticks away its own time. Occasionally, inevitably, a geologic hour is struck, and the inevitable happens: the earth’s surface shudders, buckles and cracks apart. Solid rock drops abruptly out from under whatever it was bearing up: trees, hills, cities, the ocean. The ocean reacts by forming itself into gigantic waves that move outward from the center, lifting boats, birds, our plastic debris and carrying all along until it flops itself down upon the land.
If human beings aren’t around to record it, or if modern human beings don’t take the testimony offered by pre-literate cultures seriously, we can’t know that the geologic clock was, as of that moment, re-wound and set once more to ticking. And you and I will probably be around when one such hour is struck; there is one coming, and it’s overdue. If you want to read all about it, the July 20th issue of the New Yorker has an essay about it called “The Really Big One,” by Kathryn Schulz.
She begins by telling us how we know what we know about the eventful plate tectonic history of the Cascadian Subduction zone, and how seismologists came to reconstruct that history, including its most recent cataclysm, and why they now warn of an imminent, full-margin rupture that “will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent.” Our continent, that is.
“It doesn’t speak well of European-Americans that [Native American] stories counted as evidence for a proposition only after that proposition had been proved.” Schultz writes.
Still, the reconstruction of the Cascadia earthquake of 1700 is one of those rare natural puzzles whose pieces fit together as tectonic plates do not: perfectly. It is wonderful science. It was wonderful for science. And it was terrible news for the millions of inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. As [Oregon State University paleoseismologist Chris] Goldfinger put it, “In the late eighties and early nineties, the paradigm shifted to ‘uh-oh.
For those who need to know, there is only one very tiny obligatory reference to climate change in the essay, since earthquakes (a few fracking-induced tremblers aside) are still not considered Our Fault.
Nor are they talking about the famous San Andreas fault: the “Cascadia subduction zone” runs for seven hundred miles off the northwest coast from Cape Medocino, California to Vancover Island in Canada. When this sucker lets loose, it will shake the mountains and liquefy the land and it will cause an enormous tsunami. Kind of like 2011 in Japan … only more so, because while Japan was the most seismically prepared nation on earth, the Pacific Northwest is almost completely unprepared for what is very likely to come.
I, for one, had never even heard of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Had you?
” … FEMA calculates that, across the region, something on the order of a million buildings, more than three thousand of them schools, will collapse or be compromised in the earthquake. So will half of all highway bridges, fifteen of the seventeen bridges spanning Portland’s two rivers … [minimum estimate ] of twenty-seven thousand inured, almost thirteen thousand dead… one to three months to restore electricity, a month to a year to restore drinking water…” Halfway through my reading, I realized that if the article had been discussing a disaster waiting to happen in Maine, I would be resisting the implications strenuously.
Oh, well, they’re always predicting something-or-other…I’ve been hearing about the San Andreas Fault my whole life, and California still hasn’t fallen into the sea…
Maybe I just would have quietly closed the magazine and turned my thoughts determinedly elsewhere. After all, what am I supposed to do? Abandon my house and life, move to Iowa? Today? When the sun is shining, the birds are singing?
The ground remains unmoved beneath my feet and, so far as I know, lies still and seemingly solid beneath the feet of my Oregonian and Washingtonian friends and relations.
“The science is robust … we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three.”
What do we do with this?
Published in General
Claire the Earthquake Bore knows from experience that the more often people see the words, the more likely they are to do it. So:
PREPARE before an earthquake or tsunami:
1. Secure your space
2. Create a plan
3. Prepare disaster kits
4. Strengthen your home
SURVIVEduring an earthquake:
5. Drop, cover, and hold on
[Claire’s note: Practice this, and IGNORE the stuff flying around on the Internet about the “Triangle of Life.” It’s bogus and fraudulent. Do this:
If you get a chance to practice that in an earthquake simulator, do it.]
6. Check for injuries and damage
RECOVERafter an earthquake or tsunami:
7. Follow your plan
STEP 1
Secure your space
1) Hang plants in lightweight pots with closed hooks, well secured to a joist or stud and far away from windows.
2) Install strong latches on kitchen cabinets.
3) Use flexible connections where gas lines meet appliances.
4) Remove or lock refrigerator wheels, secure to studs.
5) Secure valuable electronics items such as computers and televisions.
6) Keep breakables in low or secure cabinets with latches.
7) Move heavy plants and other large items to floor or low shelves.
8) Hang mirrors and pictures and pictures on closed hooks.
9) Secure free-standing woodstove or fireplace insert.
10) Keep heavy unstable objects away from doors and exit routes.
11) Place bed away from windows or items that may fall.
12) Secure knick knacks and other small valuables with museum putty.
13) Brace overhead light fixtures.
14) Place only light weight/soft items over bed.
15) Secure top-heavy furniture to studs.
16) Secure water heater with metal straps attached to studs.
17) Trim hazardous tree limbs.
STEP 2
Create a plan
18) Store fire extinguisher (type ABC) in easily accessible location.
19) Keep several flashlights in easily accessible places around the house.
20) Keep wrench or turn-off tool in water proof wrap near gas meter.
21) Know the location of your main electrical switch (fuse box or circuit breaker).
22) Have your emergency plan accessible and discuss with all family members.
23) Know whether you live, work, or play in a tsunami hazard zone.
24) Obtain a NOAA Weather Radio with the Public Alert feature to notify you of tsunamis and other hazards.
25) Keep flashlight, slippers and gloves next to beds.
26) Keep gas tank at least half full.
STEP 3
Prepare disaster kits
27) Keep an emergency backpack with copies of important documents near the door to grab and go.
28) Store emergency food and water supplies in a dry accessible area. Include first aid kit, extra cash, portable radio, extra batteries, medications and other necessary supplies.
STEP 4
Strengthen your home
29) Use anchor bolts every 4 to 6 feet to secure home to foundation.
30) Reinforce brick chimneys.
STEPS 5-7During and after the earthquake
see steps 5, 6, and 7.
Yeah I feel the same about sub 5’s but you always wonder if that’s just a foreshock.
The thing that still amazes me about Loma Prieta was how it happened during the world series with which both teams were from the bay area. The whole world watched it live.
I hope to never feel another quake like Northridge. The upward thrust is significantly different than the normal swaying side to side rollers that are most quakes. It was terrifying.
The original post is WAY over the top.
Life is for living. It is NOT irrational to decide to spend one’s life doing things, rather than devoting one’s time to risk mitigation.
It is practical to have some stores, agreed meet places, etc. It is impractical (and foolish) to spend “whatever it takes” to bring buildings up to a higher level of earthquake-resistance. Use cost-benefit analysis, and include the opportunity cost (the “what I could have been doing with this time/money otherwise).
All right, iWe, but stay in nice, safe Baltimore, okay? Yes, you have the occasional riot, but I’m going to run out of room in my house for refugees if too many Ricochetti are in the Pacific Northwest when the big one comes…(freaked out as I was, I found it soothing to plan for their reception…)