Cascadia Earthquake

From Old to New The article ‘The Really Big One’ written by Kathryn Schulz discusses the Cascadia Subduction Zone and its threat to the people of the Pacific Northwest. She uses the article to inform the public of how the zone was discovered, how devastating the earthquakes and tsunamis will be in this zone, and how most of the Pacific Northwest is not prepared for this zone to erupt. After Schulz article was published, it became a well known across the nation. Everyone who read the article became scared at the thought of this impending doom. How do we prepare? That’s the question on everyone’s mind and everyone has a different opinion on what the nation should start with. However, instead of coming up with new ideas on how to better protect

The last Cascadia earthquake in the 1700s gave the people of that time five minutes to prepare before it happened. If this coming earthquake is similar then the citizens of the Pacific Northwest will not have a long warning before it hits. Cities will be underwater across the coast and the people caught in the chaos can only hope and pray that they will make it out alive. Across Oregon alone it is estimated to be over a million buildings in ruins. FEMA estimates that search-and-rescue teams will be sent out across a hundred thousand square miles of land and across four hundred and fifty-three miles off the coastline. With the sheer size of the affected area, it will be hard to find everyone in time to save them. The number of casualties predicted for the Cascadia Subduction Zone rupture is incredibly high. Almost twenty-seven thousand people will be injured and over thirteen thousand people will die during the earthquake and tsunami according to FEMA (2). With barely any earthquake and tsunami procedures, the Pacific Northwest is completely unprepared for the disaster waiting to happen. The solution: build on the few procedures that are already in place and then create new ones

However, some strides are being made to better prepare for earthquakes and tsunamis. As of this year, the Pacific Northwest’s warning system for earthquakes is getting its first public test. The Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) was introduced during a workshop in February as a potential emergency planning and response system. Now it is going to be introduced to the public in preparations for any upcoming earthquakes. Similar systems are used around the globe and been proven to be extremely effective. EEW will be available for the public and for businesses about two years from now, once it has been proven effective during its run-through public tests (pnsn). Not only will the EEW help the Pacific Northwest, but also Seattle will be replacing its seawall starting in the fall of 2015. The new seawall will meet current seismic standards and is supposed to last more than 75 years (Waterfront Seattle). After reading ‘The Really Big One’, some residents are starting to prepare their homes for the future