The Biggest One

Easy, NewsBeast-style reading about the (potential) deaths of hundreds of thousands. Such a shame it's planned for the Pacific Northwest, a lovely (mostly due to the Canadian parts) region which doesn't deserve it nearly as much as, oh let's just say, you know, as an example, the States of the Former Confederacy. To name just one region.

“It will put Portland and Seattle out of action potentially for years,” he says.

And that’s just the earthquake. Next up, in the Mother of All Disasters trifecta, another deadly piece of jargon: liquefaction. That’s when the earth shakes the sandy substrate beneath houses and fire stations and hospitals all along the coast so vigorously that the soil mixes with the high-water table beneath it, turning the ground into quicksand. So what didn’t get shaken into pieces gets swallowed up by the earth, at least in some places.

Then comes Cascadia’s final blow: the tsunami. Waves traveling at jetliner speeds across the open ocean, barely higher than the surface of the water far off shore but soaring up into the sky, 100 feet or higher, once they approach land.Waves. Not just one wave, not just one skyscraper of a wall of water, but one after another after another, each flooding the cities along the Oregon and Washington coasts, ripping trees out by their roots and swirling them back and forth into a muddy whirlpool. Swimming skills don’t save people when they’re being pinned beneath the water by a floating bus.

“The tsunami will probably be the main reason” for casualties, Yeats says. “We’ll all be going about our daily lives, then, whammo. If it’s a local earthquake, you’ve got 20 minutes to get out.”

Then, the aftermath. Aid deliverable only by boat, or helicopter, for weeks, maybe even months, while those destroyed roads are brought slowly back to life. Hopefully with some help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the National Guard. “Something like Cascadia going off is really not on the radar for power centers on the east, where decisions are made," says Goldfinger. "They focus on themselves, mostly.” (Remember Katrina?) “I go to these regional meetings to discuss scenarios, response plans, and resilience, and the message from people at the National Guard is that they’re going to be victims like everybody else. People will be on their own for awhile, maybe a week or two.”

America w/o drive-through for a couple of wks.? Cannibalism will be full blown by the end of wk. one!

Best advice is simply to run. (NB: Not a chased by an animal & really you only have to outrun your friend, not the animal deal. The tsunami will neither stop nor care.)

But the necessary infrastructure upgrades in Oregon alone are estimated at $30 billion, Yeats says, and that’s money the little state doesn’t have. And even if all that money was available, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop a Cascadia Subduction Zone quake. The best advice people on the coasts pass along is just terrifying, when you think about how helpless it means you really are: if you feel the ground shaking, run. Grab the backpack you’ve hopefully already packed with emergency supplies, scoop up your children and animals, and just run. You’ve got 10 minutes, maybe 20. Run to the highest point you can find, as quickly as you can find it. Don’t come down even after the first wave recedes back out into the sea, because there’ll be another one after that. Just sit up there on that hill, provided you’ve made it there safely, and then wait.

Yes, yes!

We need a cigarette now.