Cascadia subduction zone News

Underwater Fault Could Devastate West Coast With Major Quake and Tsunami

New research is warning about an underwater fault that could devastate the West Coast with a major earthquake and tsunami. Seismologists have issued warnings that the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an offshore fault from British Columbia to Northern California, for decades. …

Los Alamos Lab Research Findings Could Lead to Earthquake Early Warning System

Machine-learning research published in two related papers today in Nature Geosciences reports the detection of seismic signals accurately predicting the Cascadia fault’s slow slippage, a type of failure observed to precede large earthquakes in other subduction zones. The researchers at …

Washington’s Skagit County Gets New Tsunami Planning Maps

Skagit County officials in northwestern Washington have a new resource to help plan for potential big waves caused by large earthquakes along the West Coast. Skagit County Department of Emergency Management Director Doug ten Hoopen tells the Skagit Valley Herald …

West Coast Towns Vulnerable to Tsunamis Consider Ways to Save Lives

Bracing for a tsunami like the one that devastated Japanese communities during a 2011 mega-earthquake, coastal communities from British Columbia to California have been grappling with how to protect people from a similar catastrophe. One of those towns is constructing …

Oregon County Updates Natural Disaster Plan to Deal with Cascadia

Deschutes County in Oregon has updated its plan for dealing with natural disasters, including the potential Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake that recently received national attention. The Bulletin reported that county commissioners adopted the update last week. The plan details how …

Scientists Defining Cascadia Subduction Zone in Pacific Northwest

Scientists are just back from a monthlong research cruise in the Pacific Ocean off Washington state, where they were trying to find the stickiest point on a section of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the huge undersea fault that breaks loose …

Report Makes Chilling Forecast On Northwest Quake

More than 10,000 people could die when – not if – a monster earthquake and tsunami occur just off the Pacific Northwest coast, researchers told Oregon legislators . Coastal towns would be inundated. Schools, buildings and bridges would collapse, and …

Big Quake Could Cause $30B Damage to Oregon

A state commission says a magnitude 9 earthquake off the Oregon coast and tsunami could cause more than $30 billion damage to the state economy. Such a quake also could kill as many as 10,000 people in the state, but …