A disaster that would dwarf Sandy
“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.
Blowback
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Obama’s Second Term?….ohh my bad.
ted c on November 5, 2012 at 10:21 PM
These liberals are taking Obama’s loss very hard.
Rocks on November 5, 2012 at 10:24 PM
Winner
faraway on November 5, 2012 at 10:24 PM
oh goody.
portlandon on November 5, 2012 at 10:26 PM
Quick! Send $100 trillion to the United Nations so this can’t happen.
Bishop on November 5, 2012 at 10:27 PM
Talk to thousands of Bambi associates…
The Mega Independent on November 5, 2012 at 10:29 PM
Johnny, tell him what he’s won!
Left Coast Right Mind on November 5, 2012 at 10:29 PM
What’s next, a second big asteroid hit that wipes us all out? I don’t know whether I want it to hit me first or the east coast so I can laugh for a few months.
arnold ziffel on November 5, 2012 at 10:31 PM
Anthropogenic Tectonic Movement
Caused by the increasing weight of human beings on the surface of the earth. Obesity in the US is rising, ergo, we need a fat tax.
Albert Gore…paging Albert Gore…..please pick up the nearest White Phone….Albert Gore…pick up the nearest White Phone.
BobMbx on November 5, 2012 at 10:35 PM
[ted c on November 5, 2012 at 10:21 PM]
This thing is a walk in Unicornpark compared to Obama’s second term.
Dusty on November 5, 2012 at 10:35 PM
[BobMbx on November 5, 2012 at 10:35 PM]
LOL
Dusty on November 5, 2012 at 10:36 PM
Could someone explain how a floating bus can pin someone beneath the water? Sounds like Ross got a little to excited at describing the disaster.
Dusty on November 5, 2012 at 10:42 PM
Cumbre Vieja, my east coast friends. That’s the one to worry about.
321mdl on November 5, 2012 at 10:44 PM
This is actually a big deal. I live on the Oregon coast, and the rock layers sweeping suddenly from horizontal to vertical (we’re talking basalt here) tells the story. The bay I live on a few hundred years ago was filled with oysters. If you dig through a few feet of tsunami silt, you’ll see them there still. Only cultivated oysters are in the bay now.
But you know, never mind. We endure storms that send the rest of the nation into panic without comment. We will surely endure a 9.0 as well, and our survivors will carry on.
Scribbler on November 5, 2012 at 10:45 PM
Or chupacabra; I hear that’s pretty bad, too.
SailorMark on November 5, 2012 at 10:58 PM
that ain’t nothin’ compared to honey badger……
ted c on November 5, 2012 at 11:05 PM
Liquefaction is a little bit technical but good lord that was a absolutely dead-wrong description of what happens.
Essentially in soil that is saturated, the water pressure increases under the waves of the earthquake, causing the grains of earth to separate. At that point you have loose grains in water, with no internal cohesion, so it’s free to act as a liquid. Sand geysers, lots of fun stuff. Slopes will slough off, and if the layer is supporting load, that load will sink into it.
TexasDan on November 5, 2012 at 11:15 PM
I suggest all those living in the area start carrying a bottle of distilled water in their anal cavity to be prepared. The author should be made to carry three.
BL@KBIRD on November 5, 2012 at 11:25 PM
What no Aliens? Bigfoots finally get organized? A bird-pig-monkey-Hong Kong-Peking-Hanoi Super flu?
Oil Can on November 5, 2012 at 11:27 PM
You can’t possibly know how amusing I find this idea…even though that’s partially because I’m so tired you could call me “Tread”.
MelonCollie on November 5, 2012 at 11:44 PM
Second that.
wildcat72 on November 5, 2012 at 11:46 PM
The Bush Legacy…
affenhauer on November 6, 2012 at 2:41 AM
It started with a few islands tipping over – events which no credible scientist has even tried to disprove — but all the Global Quaking Deniers kept claiming “it can’t possibly happen to a whole continent.”
Well, we can’t afford to wait until something that catastrophic happens. We have to act NOW!
logis on November 6, 2012 at 7:16 AM
Not a hint of Climate Change in that artical. Good.
Humans got nothing on Mother Nature. If she wants to screw with us, she will. With power and destruction we cannot imagine. There is NOTHING we can do to stop it.
If you build on a fault line you’ll be shaken,
if you build by the water, you’ll be stirred.
Jabberwock on November 6, 2012 at 7:24 AM
Yeah, well just wait till you see one of these in your yard. Then you’ll know what a disaster looks like.
Oldnuke on November 6, 2012 at 7:24 AM
Oldnuke on November 6, 2012 at 7:29 AM
I believe I put Cascadia at #4 of the Big Events that can hit N. America any day now.
Just above that is the New Madrid Fault Zone which would basically wreck the central areas of travel for cargo across the Mississippi from St. Louis southwards because we now have so much along the waterfronts that the debris flow will jeopardize all the lower crossings. Memphis, TN would also feel that. All the electrical grid crossings, comms, gas and other utilities that link the eastern part of the US that go across the Mississippi would be at risk to the NMFZ.
Above that is the Cumbre Vieja landslide in the Canary Islands. About 1 trillion tons of saturated land sits on the slope of a volcano and has already slipped 1 meter in one event in 1949. One good quake there and the rest goes into the ocean and pushes out a tsunami a mile high pointed at the entire eastern seaboard of the US. When it reaches the coast it will over-top the Empire State Building. FL is only 6′ above mean sea level at its highest natural point.
At the #1 position is Yellowstone. If that blows, its been nice knowing you. Consider the ash thrown up by Mt. St. Helens to be a sugar cube. Krakatoa is the little box of sugar cubes you get at the store. Yellowstone is the meter by meter packing crate filled with boxes of sugar cubes. The Toba event nearly got mankind about 70k years ago. Toba is smaller than Yellowstone for eruption event size. Toba is out in the area of Indonesia and nearly got homo sap. which was in Africa at the time. Yellowstone will leave survivors, yes… I mean, hey, few thousand humans with a much smaller population base survived Toba. We got a much larger population base…why we might even see 10 to 20,000 survivors globally!
Can we start getting serious about getting off this planet?
As a fixer-upper it isn’t such a great place to live.
ajacksonian on November 6, 2012 at 7:47 AM
When I started studying geology in college & first picked it to be my major, I was living in the greater Seattle area: Bellevue, Bothell, Mill Creek, Fall City, Carnation, Monroe.
I also at one time before that had lived in DuPont & Tacoma & on Ft Lewis.
And yes, an earthquake of the size this area has seen in the past will be a huge disaster.
And it is mostly bcs of settlements & where they are located.
I’m not sure I see Mt Ranier erupting catastrophically, but that would be another thing that could really be more devastating than the puny eruption of Mt St Helen’s, bcs there are so many more people living around Ranier.
Whatever the case, the Puget Sound region is a huge disaster waiting to happen.
So much of the Seattle by the water is nothing but fill anyway that will liquify in an e-quake.
Old buildings & highways & roads not built to e-quake specs=toast.
And when I was living there in the late 80′s & then the early 90s, I notice people were not prepared.
Earthquake wasn’t in their vocab like it was when I was a kid living in SoCal where you felt them much of the time & did your drills etc.
This does not happen up there.
Right before I left for Wyoming in 96′, there were many small e-quakes happening in Puget Sound. Like 2-4 magnitudes. Some we clearly felt.
I was glad I made the decision to leave for many reasons & not ever come back.
The earthquake danger was one of those reasons.
Beautiful place, but bcs of the heavily settled areas, I would never want to be caught there in a disaster. Even if you were prepared, dealing with the unpreparedness of your neighbors would be very dangerous.
Badger40 on November 6, 2012 at 8:03 AM
LOL!
I, as a geologist, look at all of these things as inevitable.
The Earth is a habitable paradise bcs of plate tectonics.
So while we have all of these things that could happen & will happen, I live on & don’t worry.
We humans are probably enjoying a lull in the storm of the history of this planet.
But Earth will be here long after we are extinct.
Unless we go populate the galaxy somewhere else.
Whatever the case, these things happen on all planets like ours in the universe.
I just find it all fascinating.
Badger40 on November 6, 2012 at 8:07 AM
Dihydrogen Monoxide credits anyone? I got some real cheep.
Frank Enstine on November 6, 2012 at 8:23 AM
If you live on that coast, you need to listen seriously to the crazy talkers and put up some stores and batteries and water and ALWAYS have it ready. In the NE, we prepare like that for snow and ice, but the hurricane was not winter yet, people had their guard down, people were still at work, in snow you scoot home. If the weather reporters were not always crying wolf wolf over a hang nail, I think more people would have been paying attention.
Fleuries on November 6, 2012 at 8:25 AM
I was there for the Rattle in Seattle. Some of the folks started thinking in terms of building to quake codes after that. But probably not as many as should. And, of course, that was 12 years ago, so … short attention spans and all that.
GWB on November 6, 2012 at 9:13 AM