Oregon – Big Earthquake Coming Sooner
The good news: New research is giving scientists a better handle on when the big one might strike the Pacific Coast.
The bad news: It probably will be sooner than we thought.
“The amount of devastation is going to be unbelievable,” says Rob Witter, coastal geologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. “People aren’t going to be ready for this. Even if they are prepared, they are going to be surprised by the level of devastation.”
Witter spoke last week about the latest in earthquake and tsunami studies — it’s Earthquake and Tsunami Awareness Month — as part of state and local efforts to educate the public on preparing for a megaquake of magnitude 9 or more. Witter and James Roddey, spokesman for the state agency, also will give a public talk Tuesday in Newport.
Witter says scientists are now in wide agreement that there’s a 10 to 14 percent chance a powerful earthquake and tsunami will strike the Oregon coast in the next 50 years.
Why do they think that? The latest findings come from Chris Goldfinger, director of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Lab at Oregon State University, Roddey says. But to understand Goldfinger’s work, Roddey goes back to what he calls “one of the great scientific detective stories of the 20th century.”
Twenty-five years ago, scientists didn’t think the Cascadia subduction zone — a place 50 to 75 miles off Oregon where two of the Earth’s plates meet, one sliding under the other — could produce earthquakes.
