Is An Earthquake About to Strike North America?

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you have probably already heard of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It is where the Juan de Fuca plate meets the North American plate, and it stretches approximately 700 miles from northern Vancouver Island all the way down to northern California. This subduction zone is capable of producing far more powerful earthquakes than the much more famous San Andreas fault in southern California, and scientists tell us that it is only a matter of time before another continent-killing earthquake hits this area. And when it does hit, it will be far worse than any other natural disaster that the United States has ever seen up to this point.

According to CNN, "the largest earthquake in the continental United States" took place along the Cascadia Subduction Zone on Jan. 26, 1700, and one of the reasons why it is considered to be far more dangerous than other west coast faults is because it is also capable of producing massive tsunamis...

The Cascadia can deliver a quake that's many times stronger—plus a tsunami.

"Cascadia can make an earthquake almost 30 times more energetic than the San Andreas to start with, and then it generates a tsunami at the same time, which the side-by-side motion of the San Andreas can't do," said Chris Goldfinger, a professor of geophysics at Oregon State University.

The Cascadia is capable of delivering a 9.0-magnitude quake—an awesome show of force by Mother Nature.

So what would that look like?

What would a 9.0-magnitude quake that also produced a huge tsunami do to the highly populated northwest coast?

According to an article in the New Yorker, the head of the FEMA division that oversees Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska says that "everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast."

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.

...By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA's Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska, says, "Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast."

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.

Like I said earlier, it would be far worse than any natural disaster that we have ever experienced in the history of the United States up until now.

And it could happen at literally any moment. In fact, many scientists believe that we are way overdue for a continent-altering earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Tension has been building up there for a very long time, and at some point that tension will be released.

A recent piece by Adam Rothstein gives us an idea of what the first few moments of such a quake might look like in the city of Portland, Oregon.

Cacophony swells from the city as if it is howling in response to the earth's call: car alarms, shattering glass, the thudding of bricks popping out of building facades, humans screaming in fright, and far off, echoes of what sound like dumpsters clattering to the ground from the jaws of garbage trucks. It is the sound of shifting foundations and collapsing masonry, continuously, a roar increasing from every direction. It is the sound of the living surfaces that a city takes for granted becoming undone.

Since we have not experienced such an earthquake in any of our lifetimes, it is easy to assume that one will never happen.

But that is not what the scientists are telling us.

In fact, they insist that the odds of "a continent-rending earthquake" in the near future are actually quite good...

The Pacific Northwest is due for a continent-rending earthquake. Experts believe the odds of a Big One happening in the next half century are about one in three, the odds of a Very Big One roughly one in ten, and that, in either case, we are disastrously unprepared.

And let us not forget that the Cascadia Subduction Zone sits directly along the Ring of Fire, and the Ring of Fire has started to become much more active in recent years.

In addition, if the region starts to become more seismically active there is also a very real possibility that we could see a full-blown eruption of Mt. Rainier, which has been described as "the most dangerous mountain in the United States."

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/56204-is-an-earthquake-about-to-strike-north-america