Is California ready for a mega tsunami? How about Canada, Washington, or Oregon?
An 8.3 magnitude earthquake and tsunami alerted a million Chilean people to evacuate their houses Wednesday night. The casualty count this year was a dozen compared to the 500 deaths caused by the 8.8 magnitude earthquake back in 2010. "It's a positive message for us. If the Chileans can evacuate a million people in 15 or 20 minutes, we should be able to do it as well," said Costas Synolakis, director of the University of Southern California's Tsunami Research Center, according to NBC News.
What made the cities vulnerable? The cities on the West Coast are in a vulnerable position and at risk if the Cascadia fault line will be triggered by the earthquake, which might cause the worst disaster in the history of America. "Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast. This is one time that I'm hoping all the science is wrong, and it won't happen for another thousand years," said Kenneth Murphy, FEMA director, Inquisitr reported.
What is the Cascadia subduction zone? "Cascadia" came from the Cascade Range (chain of volcanic mountains) that follows the same course a hundred miles inland. The "subduction zone" part, on the other hand, refers to the earth's tectonic plate sliding underneath (subducting) another, according to The New Yorker.
Scientists predicted last July that the Pacific Northwest is 72 years overdue for a megaquake and that it could devastate the Pacific Northwest, as previously reported by HNGN. The Cascadia subduction zone runs 700 miles off-coast of Pacific Northwest, starting from Cape Mendocino, California, along Oregon and Washington, and ending around Vancouver, Canada.
There is an inevitable potential danger, and scientists say there are things that we can all do about it. "OSSPAC estimates that in the I-5 corridor it will take between one and three months after the earthquake to restore electricity, a month to a year to restore drinking water and sewer service, six months to a year to restore major highways, and eighteen months to restore health-care facilities. It's a major fault line. It's going to produce a very major earthquake. The response to that should not be blind panic or obliviousness. You're better off being prepared than sticking your head in the sand," said Kathryn Schulz, journalist and writer of "The Really Big One," according to KGW.
