Everyone living near the PNW coast knows about the danger of the predicted future Magnitude 9 Cascadia subduction zone earthquake. There are committees to help locally, signs pointing to tsunami escape routes and teams of first responders strategizing the response.
The news is that the Cascadia subduction zone and the San Andreas fault – may be synchronized, with earthquakes on one fault potentially triggering seismic events on the other. “We could expect that an earthquake on one of the faults alone would draw down the resources of the whole country to respond to it,” Goldfinger said. “And if they both went off together, then you’ve got potentially San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver all in an emergency situation in a compressed timeframe.” Not to mention Los Angeles.
The Cascadia subduction zone stretches from Vancouver Island in Canada to Northern California. The San Andreas fault begins at Cape Mendocino south of Eureka, turns inland and terminates southeast of Los Angeles near the Salton Sea. Cascadia and San Andreas come together near Cape Mendocino.
Um, if it happens in the next three years you can count on zero aid being offered to these particular areas. Well, maybe Vancouver since it’s governed by people who believe in government, but San Francisco, Portland, Seattle? What do they have in common? Right: they’re not farmers, they’re not red, they’re not important (apparently.)