Tag Archives: Mega Quake

Reality of a mega quake on the Juan de Fuca fault would equal multiple Katrinas, and for some the best plan is to run

Mathew 24:7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

Important Takeaways:

  • A Disaster the Size of Multiple Katrinas Is Building Off Washington’s Coast
  • Someday — next week, next year, maybe next century — a sudden and deadly marine shock will strike the Northwest coast: what locals call the Big One, a circa 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake generating tsunami surges reaching 60 feet high or more
  • The offshore Juan de Fuca Plate, is what’s left of a continent-sized plate that has for the past 200 million years been intermittently sliding under the larger North American Plate, an actual continent, in a process called subduction
  • The Washington coast is the likeliest target zero for the next megaquake and tsunami.
  • The sliding-under movement of subduction is very different from the side-to-side grinding of the San Andreas Fault to the south. There, frequent movements, experienced as earthquakes, release tectonic tension before it builds to catastrophic levels. Along the Subduction Zone, however, this tension builds for hundreds of years and releases with explosive force. When the Juan de Fuca Plate jams farther under the North American Plate, it will push it up 30 feet or more and displace vast quantities of seawater. And a tsunami will be born.
  • The last Cascadia earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 9.0, occurred around 9 p.m. on Jan. 26, 1700, a date known precisely thanks to meticulous Japanese records…
  • They’ve now identified more than 40 earthquakes along the subduction zone in the past 10,000 years, nearly all in the 8.2 to 9.2 magnitude range — one every 240 years on average
  • The smallest had an estimated magnitude of 7.5, the same as the devastating recent quake in Turkey and Syria.
  • “Megaquakes” of 8.7-plus magnitude, capable of generating large tsunamis, have averaged 430-year intervals.
  • Five appear to have reached the magnitude (9.1) of Japan’s 2011 Tōhoku (Fukushima) Earthquake and the 2004 Sumatran quake whose tsunami killed 228,000 people in 11 countries.
  • After 323 quiet years, another could strike anytime.
  • According to new draft data from that agency, 112,555 residents of the four counties lining Washington’s ocean coast and Strait of Juan de Fuca live in the inundation zone — land that tsunami waves will overrun.
  • Earlier benchmarks suggest that 23 percent will be unable to reach higher ground in time and 18 percent — perhaps 20,000 people, more than 10 times the number who died in Katrina — will be washed out to sea or crushed by debris.
  • These estimates don’t account for the tens of thousands of tourists and nonresident workers who would likely be in the area if the tsunami struck during the day, or the 63,000 inundation-zone residents zone along Puget Sound and the inner straits, or an estimated 1,100 people across the region who would die in the initial shaking.

Read the original article by clicking here.

California Prepares for the Next Big Earthquake

Scientists are admitting the likelihood of a massive earthquake along the San Andreas Fault is higher than previous predictions.

The Third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, released in March, states that newly discovered fault zones could see a quake jumping between them.  The cascading quake could reach an earthquake of 8.0 or greater.

The odds of a mega-quake increased from 4.7 percent to 7 percent.

The report also said that the odds of a medium level quake has decreased along the lines of the increase of a massive quake.

The southern section of the San Andreas Fault has not seen a massive earthquake in almost 300 years.  The last major quake along the fault took place in 1989 near Santa Cruz, California during Game 3 of the 1989 World Series.   63 people died in that earthquake.  The state’s last major quake overall was the 1994 Northridge quake along a previously undiscovered fault line that left 57 dead and 5,000 injured.

California’s Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones says that he worries about the next “big one.”

“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the strong likelihood of a large earthquake,” he said.

Amazingly, despite the fact the state is hit with 1,000 earthquakes a year (most of very small magnitude), only 11 percent of homeowners and renters in the state have earthquake insurance.  Only a comparable number of businesses have insurance.

“It has been 21 years since the last major earthquake in the state and many rationalise that they can do without,” Robert Hartwig of the Insurance Information Institute said.  “Unfortunately, too many seem willing to play Russian roulette with what is likely to be their most valuable asset, their home.”