© Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian
A Japanese flag flies above wreckage in front of the city hospital in Onagawa, a community devastated by the March 11 tsunami and 9-magnitude earthquake. Experts estimate that at least 5,000 Oregonians will die in a similar quake and tsunami here. The only question, they say, is when.
Experts armed with seabed core samples and findings from Japan are ready to place odds on the likelihood of a giant earthquake rocking the Northwest.
Within the next 50 years, they say, Washington and northern Oregon face a 10 to 15 percent probability of an offshore quake powerful enough to kill thousands and launch a tsunami that would level coastal cities. Off southern Oregon, the probability of an 8-or-higher magnitude earthquake is greater -- 37 percent, according to
Oregon State University's Chris Goldfinger, one of the world's top experts on subduction-zone quakes.
Goldfinger and other authorities who spoke at a
Portland conference this week say the Northwest is
dangerously unprepared for a massive quake they consider inevitable at some point. At least 300,000 Oregon children attend school in buildings vulnerable to collapse when the Big One comes.
"I think every parent should know this," said
Kit Miyamoto, an earthquake engineer from Japan whose company is helping repair quake-damaged structures in Haiti. "Those schools should be banned."
Earthquake experts are speaking with new urgency after the
Japanese earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 24,000 March 11, shattering long-held assumptions on safety and survival. A much smaller New Zealand quake in February showed what can happen in a city similar to Portland, killing 181 and destroying thousands of houses in
Christchurch.
