The San Andreas Fault in southern California gets more headlines, but the Cascadia Subduction Zone is a much larger threat by far. This fault zone 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.
An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when. And keep in mind: The next full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent.
When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan — that one was the third of the week — and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.
Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-three people and caused six billion dollars' worth of damage, lasted about fifteen seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. A thirty-second earthquake generally has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. A minute-long quake is in the high sevens, a two-minute quake has entered the eights, and a three-minute quake is in the high eights. By four minutes, an earthquake has hit magnitude 9.0.
When Goldfinger looked at his watch, it was quarter to three. The conference was wrapping up for the day. He was thinking about sushi. The speaker at the lectern was wondering if he should carry on with his talk. The earthquake was not particularly strong. Then it ticked past the sixty-second mark, making it longer than the others that week. The shaking intensified. The seats in the conference room were small plastic desks with wheels. Goldfinger, who is tall and solidly built, thought, No way am I crouching under one of those for cover. At a minute and a half, everyone in the room got up and went outside.
Comment: In recent years the Out of Africa hypothesis has been well and truly debunked, and this study proves just how weak some of the arguments are:
- 700,000 years old skull discovered in Greek cave in 1959 shatters Out of Africa theory
- Rethinking Out of Africa: New study suggests ancient hominins in Asia 500k earlier than previously thought
- The mysterious relationship between the boab tree of Australia and the Baobab tree of Africa
- Out of Europe rather than out of Africa, new study suggest
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