Anyone living in the pacific northwest? How's your tsunami preparedness?

[Jeff Kelly]

This New Yorker article was linked to from a German news site:

The Really Big One. An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.

Chilling read.

[Yegolev]

They also have volcanoes.

[Hawkbit]

There's alarmist, then there's that article. Jesus.

[rattran]

May as well spend your time preparing for the Yellowstone Caldera/Supervolcano eruption. It too is bound to happen. Just not likely while any of us are alive, and there's just about the same level of sweet fuck all you can do to prepare.

Maybe practice toe-touches so you're more ready to kiss your own ass goodbye.

[Typhon]

I'm not getting why this is an alarmist article.  There was a magnitude 9 in January of 1700.  The area has an average recurrence period of 243 years.  It's 2015.  There has been no seismic activity in that time (read: no release in the potential energy being built up by all the land being pushed up).

Seems pretty straight-forward.

Add/Edit:
From a page on Oregon State Edu

“By the year 2060, if we have not had an earthquake, we will have exceeded 85 percent of all the known intervals of earthquake recurrence in 10,000 years,” Patton said. “The interval between earthquakes ranges from a few decades to thousands of years. But we already have exceeded about three-fourths of them.”

That an earthquake and associated tsunami are going to happen seems pretty straight-forward.  Could be in another 600 years, could be tomorrow.  It's the response to that inevitability, and the timeline for plans to implement those response measures, are now the interesting conversations.  Seems their planning is largely limited to, "don't build important stuff there, you know, in the future".

[Nebu]

I see it as a solution to Seattle's traffic issues. 

[Lightstalker]

Add/Edit:
From a page on Oregon State Edu

“By the year 2060, if we have not had an earthquake, we will have exceeded 85 percent of all the known intervals of earthquake recurrence in 10,000 years,” Patton said. “The interval between earthquakes ranges from a few decades to thousands of years. But we already have exceeded about three-fourths of them.”

If the recurrence includes spans of "thousands" of years and they only sampled the last 10,000 years it really seems like they don't have a large enough sample.  Indeed, they only have 19 events and suggest a pattern of clustered events (2-5 short period events followed by long breaks between clusters - basically makes average recurrence misleading at best).  So what?  4-5 clusters in 10,000 years? 

Ok, that's a huge paper for 19 data points.  They see 4 gaps and 2-5 clusters of events with a range of 720-1190 years between clusters.  We're off the tail of a 5 event cluster (largest cluster size observed) and nearly over *that* cluster's average recurrence.  With sample of only 4 event clusters and five within this cluster we've got a fair bit of uncertainty.  We might be in a gap or coming due for the next hit in this most recent cluster.  The best part about earthquakes is we don't know enough about the model to tell if we're overdue or 600 years away from the next event until after it happens.  Because the point of the clustered analysis is that the events are not independent, using raw averages is disingenuous.  So yes, alarmist.  Average is a terrible summary stat here.  The 85% sound bite captures all the intra-cluster intervals (and exaggerates the data).  Looking at sediment accumulation ahead of the continental plate is really clever, but the time-spans are simplified to a sensationalist end.  Watch, I'll post this and the world will end.


There are plenty of reminders in the area of what can happen. 

Well, there was this. 
And we all live under this reminder.
Oh, and this is just down the coast a bit.
And if you look under the water...  an upright forest under the lake.

So, the idea that something bad might happen isn't exactly news.  When it happens the energy released puts it in the class of "don't sweat it" because nothing you do to save you from the potential 30' of elevation change and/or a 100' wall of water / hot mud that a full slip would represent. 

[Torinak]

This New Yorker article was linked to from a German news site:

The Really Big One. An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.

Chilling read.

We prepare by not having earthquake insurance. If when the big one hits, because of where we are and the local terrain (one of the more stable areas), if we take enough damage to cover the 10-20% deductible that'll mean that all of Seattle proper will be totally destroyed and the earthquake insurance companies will just declare bankruptcy. If a tsunami reaches our distance and elevation, then the entire Puget Sound area will have already been completely obliterated (1-2M deaths).

Less flippantly, we make sure that everything is properly strapped down or secured to reduce the likelihood of property damage and injury during a quake that doesn't just totally destroy everything. We keep enough supplies on hand to be able to survive for a while after a quake, but not so many that we'll become an immediate target for the roving bands of post-apocalypse gangs that'll pop up (we'll point them to our neighbors). We did use the USGS seismic hazard maps and others for the area when determining where to look for houses.

There are sites where you can watch earthquakes in near real time (e.g., the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network or another earthquake tracker). Heck, in grad school we wrote software to pull and graph real-time data coming off of the seismic sensor networks on Mt Rainier; it made for an interesting screensaver.

I've already been through several earthquakes (e.g., the Nisqually earthquake in 2001). More will happen. Volcanoes will erupt again; I was actually visiting Mt St Helens when a ranger first noticed a new fast-growing lava dome...it was a bit chilling to hear a ranger say "That wasn't there yesterday" when looking at a 20-30 foot bulge in the crater. Mt St Helens will probably go again before Mt Rainier does, and both before the Yellowstone Caldera destroys most life on Earth. Human-caused disasters may get us before any of those happen.

[Khaldun]

Growing up in California, I used to say when folks from the East Coast asked how we dealt with the inevitability of "the Big One" that you have a kind of cognitive process that goes like this:

1) Maybe it won't happen while I'm alive and living in this place
2) Maybe if it does, the epicenter will be somewhere quite far away from me
3) Maybe if the epicenter is close, my own property and my family and I will not get much damage overall (because we're lucky, because the house is reasonably well-built, etc.)
4) Maybe if we get some damage, none of us will be hurt
5) Maybe if we get hurt we'll not be hurt too badly
6) Maybe if we're hurt really badly we'll survive
7) And if we're dead, probably just about everybody else around here is too. Too bad, nothing to be done.

Basically I think this is how all of us get through ignoring certain kinds of statistically tangible dangers in our environments. You take reasonable, affordable precautions and then try not to let it worry you too much.

[Paelos]

We had a similar process of thinking about Tornadoes in Texas.

[Chimpy]

There is basically nowhere that people live that is not "doomed" by some catastrophic natural event. To obsess about that eventuality instead of other, more predictable and likely events always seemed a bit goofy to me.

[IainC]

It's a difference in scale though. A lot of natural disasters are easily survivable given a certain level of preparedness. Tornadoes might fuck your house and your neighbourhood, but you can scurry below ground and still be alive when they have passed by. If you're outdoors and you see one forming, you generally have enough time to get out of its way. Big earthquake and tidal wave combo? If you're not already out of the way when you see it coming then your survival chance is effectively zero.

[Paelos]

It's a difference in scale though. A lot of natural disasters are easily survivable given a certain level of preparedness. Tornadoes might fuck your house and your neighbourhood, but you can scurry below ground and still be alive when they have passed by. If you're outdoors and you see one forming, you generally have enough time to get out of its way. Big earthquake and tidal wave combo? If you're not already out of the way when you see it coming then your survival chance is effectively zero.

Hurricanes are usually the worst for death tolls in the USA, and those are almost always preventable with good evacuation. Yet, we still don't. After that it's usually floods and tornadoes that kill. Mostly because those sneak up on you in the night or in the case of floods they block off escape.

Earthquakes seem to cause the fewest deaths in US History with the exception of the 1906 SF Earthquake, which was the worst one on record in the country. However, the worst fatality natural disaster in US History was the 1900 Galveston Hurricane.

So until "The Big One" hits in California, earthquakes aren't high on the list for major death toll worry.

[Bunk]

We fully expect to have "the big one" hit eventually, but Tsunamis aren't huge on our list of concerns in Vancouver. I do work near the airport on an area that would likely sink a few feet if a really big quake hit, so we do have emergency plans, stores of food and water in the office, that sort of thing.

An actual Tsunami is really only a threat to the west coast of Vancouver Island, which is very sparsely populated:



Yay 285 mile long natural breakwaters!

[Samwise]

I looked up an inundation zone map for SF and it looks like nothing from any conceivable tsunami would make it more than a few blocks inland.  The neighborhood that would get hit the hardest would be the Marina.  Which is basically Frat Row for techies and bankers.  Good.

Of course a big San Andreas slip is still gonna knock some shit down, but Loma Prieta was recent enough that most of our buildings are built to handle some shaking.

[Cyrrex]

There is basically nowhere that people live that is not "doomed" by some catastrophic natural event. To obsess about that eventuality instead of other, more predictable and likely events always seemed a bit goofy to me.

Here in northern Europe, we just have to worry about catastrophically depressing weather.  It might actually be more dangerous.  That said, we seem now every year to have "hurricane" warnings even here, which I don't think is something the area is normally exposed to.

[TheWalrus]

I live in the orange part on the above map. Nobody here gives a fuck. Including me. We have one road in from civilization. If anything at all happens, we are varying degrees of proper fucked. Pretty area, really poor survivability for idiots.

[Abagadro]

Here in SLC we are in the window for a "big one" (geologically speaking, so anytime in the next 1000 years) that will create liquefaction of the ground since the whole place is built on a sedimentary ancient lake-bed.  I'm involved on the governmental emergency preparedness front and usually when I talk to the experts they ask me where my house is and when it was built. When I tell them their response is, "Well if you are home your house will collapse, so you won't be any use anyways."  Niiiiice.

[Raph]

My cousin who lives in the Portland area circulated this article on Facebook which has a less alarmist tone and goes over summary info on the Cascadia stuff in the wake of the other article:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/20/1403522/-So-About-That-Cascadia-Article

[WayAbvPar]

If we can hold the tsunami off long enough for the sea levels to rise a few meters, I might just be sitting on some beachfront property 

[Signe]

The people I know in that area have all said they would be wiped out.  Their home, jobs, schools, everything.  That would a shame.  That area is so awesome despite all the serial killers.

[Goumindong]

I'm not getting why this is an alarmist article.  There was a magnitude 9 in January of 1700.  The area has an average recurrence period of 243 years.  It's 2015.  There has been no seismic activity in that time (read: no release in the potential energy being built up by all the land being pushed up).

Seems pretty straight-forward.

Its alarmist because it makes it sound like its going to destroy Seattle. Which is dumb, because there is an 8000 foot tall mountain between Seattle and the Cascadia Fault.

Max shaking in Seattle will be around a 7.5 for a full fault rupture and there will be basically no tsunami (Pike Place its 100 feet above the water anyway). Potential damages to skyscrapers making them uninhabitable, but unlikely they will fall. Unreinforced masonry buildings will be wrecked. Most areas with liquefiable soil are low density (and there really aren't that many). Would be bad if it happened during the morning commute and the viaduct collapsed. Plenty of economic damages.  Seattle is also the nexus of incoming emergency supplies (due to i-90 corridor being the largest east/west highway on the west coast. Smaller than i-80 at San Fran, but wider across the mountains which is what matters).

In the event of a full on 9.0 earthquake the damage in terms of shaking and subduction is going to be done on the coast where they have small unreinforced buildings and no buffer zone for the tsunami and potentially no way to reach high ground if they have the time. The good thing is that very few people live on the coast. I mean, its a lot of people, but it will not be worse in terms of lives lost than the Japanese Tsunami even if its larger in size and scope just because not enough people live there.

When rainier goes it will be probably be worse in terms of lives lost

[Jeff Kelly]

No building in Washington State was designed to withstand any kind of earthquake.

Japan has records of earthquakes going as far back as 600 CE and the only reason the 2011 earthquake was so devastating came from the fact that Japanese officials under-estimated the impact of the tsunami created by an earthquake of that magnitude. Even though experts had been warning about that for at least a decade. Most of the damage following the 2011 earthquake came from the tsunami and not from the initial earthquake. Even though the 2011 earthquake was a 9.0.

That's because Japan has literally hundreds of years of experience in building structures that are able to withstand high magnitude earthquakes. California has done a lot over the last thirty to forty years to make its structures better able to withstand high magnitude earthquakes. That being said even with all of that preparedness the 2011 earthquake and tsunami managed to wreak a lot of devastation. Quote: "A February 10, 2014 agency report listed 127,290 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 272,788 buildings 'half collapsed', and another 747,989 buildings partially damaged".

The epicentre of that quake was 43 miles off the coast of Japan by the way.

I'd assume that buildings in Washington and Oregon have been designed to not collapse under their own weight and to sustain the normal stresses a building in a safe zone is subjected to, like wind and rain and snow. Since the fact that those states are located on a major fault line couldn't have been known until the late eighties/early nineties. Since then not that much has changed regarding building codes or such things

So I don't share your optimism that wide-spread damage to buildings will only happen along the coast. Even if that happens the quake will wreak havok on the infrastructure making it hard or even impossible to bring supplies to the affected reagions. Seattle as a major hub for emergency supplies will only be of help if rescue efforts can reach it and if roads and bridges are still intact so that the supplies can be shipped to affected regions. If bridges collapse and the structural damage SEATAC is subjected to is too high there'll be a lot of initial problems dealing with getting acces to affected areas.

The meltdown at Fukushima Daichi was caused in part by Japanese efforts being unable to reach the facility with heavy equipment due to the temporary collapse of infrastructure like roads and bridges.

[Chimpy]

Do you have actual knowledge about Seattle and its building codes or are you just talking out of your ass. (You talking about snow like ads in Seattle/Portland makes it pretty obvious that you probably are talking out of your ass as Seattle gets a measurable snowfall about once a decade.)

Seattle has minor earthquakes somewhat frequently and it had a 6.8 quake as recently as 2001. I mean there is a "Seattle fault" for fucks sake and there is a giant fucking active volcano that dominates your view on days where it is even remotely clear and active volcanoes are almost always in earthquake prone areas.

[Merusk]

He's talking out his ass. For one he's German, for two he's in no way associated with the construction industry.

Washington adopted the ICC in 2003 as the statewide code. They are currently under the 2012 ICC and I imagine they will adopt the 2015 once it's through their review cycle. That code has specific seismic requirements they must meet to build. Prior to that it was all over the place.

Additionally they have passed retrofit laws to address vulnerable infrastructure like bridges and highway rises.

http://www.wsspc.org/public-policy/legislation/washington/

First google search. Literally 30s of research.

[Soln]

Are we still doing this thread?  Jesus Christ.  I also live here.  What are we supposed to do -- not live in buildings?

How about we spin the Internet for other hyper-probable-overdue-Web-over-informed-catastrophes... how come Vesuvius hasn't erupted yet?  What's the plan Naples??

[IainC]

how come Vesuvius hasn't erupted yet?  What's the plan Naples??

I believe the plan there is for the population to assume a bunch of embarrassing poses so that future archaeologists will at least get a good snigger out of the excavation.

[Goumindong]

No building in Washington State was designed to withstand any kind of earthquake.

So I don't share your optimism that wide-spread damage to buildings will only happen along the coast. Even if that happens the quake will wreak havok on the infrastructure making it hard or even impossible to bring supplies to the affected reagions. Seattle as a major hub for emergency supplies will only be of help if rescue efforts can reach it and if roads and bridges are still intact so that the supplies can be shipped to affected regions. If bridges collapse and the structural damage SEATAC is subjected to is too high there'll be a lot of initial problems dealing with getting acces to affected areas.

The meltdown at Fukushima Daichi was caused in part by Japanese efforts being unable to reach the facility with heavy equipment due to the temporary collapse of infrastructure like roads and bridges.

Well first off. Washington has the most comprehensive building code with respect to earthquakes in the Nation. There are quite a few at risk buildings, but nothing big. Lots of unreinforced masonry buildings built before the earthquake codes in the 90's that were in direct response to finding out about the Cascadia Fault Line. Like the 127k structures in Japan that fell, that is just what happens when you build things out of wood.

Second off. Seattle is about 90 to 100 miles from the coast and the Cascadia fault line is another 50 beyond that. So sure it will be a big quake but this is about the same distance as Tokyo was from the epicenter of the Japanese quake and well Tokyo wasn't destroyed. This assumes that the quake lands directly off the coast from Seattle. If the epicenter is further north or south from Seattle then Seattle will be much further away from the shaking as Toyko was. And well. Toyko wasn't destroyed

[MahrinSkel]

Seattle proper is protected from a tsunami by the Olympic Peninsula and the mountains thereof, although the docks will get flooded most of the residential areas are well above sea level and there won't be the kind of surge that forces it uphill by the time it winds through the Juan de Fuca. Grey's Harbor is pretty much fucked, and in a worst-case scenario it could potentially wipe out the entire valley inland from there as far as Olympia, but again, by the time the surge makes it's way over that much land and through all the little straits in the south end of Puget Sound, not much will happen in Seattle proper.

Some neighborhoods could experience liquefaction events, and there'd probably be a lot of landslides and a few places the interstate is elevated might not stand up, but the core infrastructure and most of the population would be just fine.

--Dave

[Tannhauser]

The people I know in that area have all said they would be wiped out.  Their home, jobs, schools, everything.  That would a shame.  That area is so awesome despite all the serial killers.

And the high suicide rate.  And the poor mass transit.

[Count Nerfedalot]

When a tsunami hits Seattle after snaking its way around the Olympic peninsula, it's just going to wash over a fresh mud plain from the lahar shed off the side of Mt. Rainier by the earthquake anyway, so it won't actually do any damage because nothing will be left to destroy! 

[Hawkbit]

I looked into the projected lahar paths at one point. I'm pretty sure they're predicting the area just north of Tacoma to be completely wiped out. Puyallup, Auburn, Kent will likely be very affected.

[Goumindong]

I looked into the projected lahar paths at one point. I'm pretty sure they're predicting the area just north of Tacoma to be completely wiped out. Puyallup, Auburn, Kent will likely be very affected.

There will likely be some flooding in South Seattle. But not enough to worry and all in industrial areas.

[Fabricated]

Maybe we can begin to form our future cyberpunk dystopia in earnest after all the natural disasters happen.