[HN Gopher] 1700 Cascadia Earthquake
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1700 Cascadia Earthquake
Author : Hooke
Score : 55 points
Date : 2021-05-05 02:24 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| thedigitalone wrote:
| "Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5
| will be toast."
|
| Ouch.
| 99_00 wrote:
| This shouldn't be in the article. It's unscientific, non-
| technically, and pretty much meaningless.
| bawolff wrote:
| Really?
|
| I don't know if the statement is backed up by science, but
| its a falsifiable empirical prediction. It is entirely within
| the realm of science to make predictions that certain
| geographic regions will have significant structural and human
| damage in the event of some hypothetical natural disaster.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| I'm not sure I would call statements by a FEMA director
| "unscientific."
| 99_00 wrote:
| You aren't actually making a point.
|
| Are you saying that ""Our operating assumption is that
| everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast" has
| scientific value?
|
| Are you saying that because of someone's tittle they are
| incapable of saying something hyperbolic?
|
| Do you disagree with my word use? What is a better word?
| jakeva wrote:
| Neither are you
| adrianpike wrote:
| It's a great soundbite, but it loses a lot of context when
| distilled down.
|
| Most of the infill west of I5 in the Seattle area will probably
| liquefy, but there's mountain ranges to the west of I5 that
| would take a hell of a quake to toast.
| eloff wrote:
| Anything low lying in that area is at high risk in a cascadia
| quake. Buildings on high ground "only" have the quake risk,
| which is still significant.
| JALTU wrote:
| I'm more concerned about the homes that will go up in
| flames due to ruptured gas lines. With the fire department
| overwhelmed, the potential amount of toxic smoke/fumes
| post-quake scares me more than the quake. Assuming I
| survive, assuming my family/friends do, assuming we all
| even are happy about being survivors of something so
| colossal, at such scale...
| eloff wrote:
| The worst smoke can do is suffocate you, or raise your
| risk of cancer, but you can move out of harm's way.
|
| The quake itself and tsunami risk is the dangerous part
| for most people.
| bawolff wrote:
| I dont think smoke is what you should be worried about
| during a natural gas explosion.
|
| Nonetheless, id still be worried about things that will
| kill me, even if its not in the next 10 seconds. Dead is
| still dead.
| eloff wrote:
| The fire and explosions are dangerous to be sure, but the
| OP specifically called out smoke.
| vmception wrote:
| The earth will be fine its the humans we are worried about
|
| Specifically, the perpetual habitability for humans
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| FEMA doesn't care about damage to mountains. They're talking
| about human-made property and dead people.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Yes, I have assumed they meant something more specific, like
| "every building and road west of I5" (I live only a few miles
| east, so I doubt I'd be unscathed myself, somehow).
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Would not be complete without this fantastic article:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...
| pmontra wrote:
| And Peter Watts' Starfish, from the web site of the author
| https://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm
|
| That's the next earthquake.
| interestica wrote:
| And Pacific Northwest Seismic Network blog
|
| https://pnsn.org/blog/2020/01/27/getting-ready-for-the-
| next-...
| gxqoz wrote:
| Fun song by Tacocat inspired by this article:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJH1WKSugNo
|
| I saw them perform it at a concert in front of the Space
| Needle. Really felt I was tempting fate there.
| nowandlater wrote:
| That Jazz Bass is so damn minty fresh; honestly, you're
| pretty lucky that alone didn't cause the big one!
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| From that article:
|
| > fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die
| in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami.
|
| From the rest of the article, it seems that this estimate of
| deaths is too low by an order of magnitude. More people died in
| the Fukushima earthquake, and that is in a country that is
| probably the most earthquake ready country in the world.
|
| If you only have 15 minutes from the start of the earthquake to
| when the tsunami rolls in, given the density and the lack of
| preparation, I could easily see several 100 thousand people
| perishing if not a million.
| akiselev wrote:
| That figure comes with a caveat that's mentioned towards the
| end of the article:
|
| _> As for casualties: the figures I cited earlier--twenty-
| seven thousand injured, almost thirteen thousand dead--are
| based on the agency's official planning scenario, which has
| the earthquake striking at 9:41 A.M. on February 6th. If,
| instead, it strikes in the summer, when the beaches are full,
| those numbers could be off by a horrifying margin._
|
| Thirteen thousand sounds like a best case scenario. If it
| happens 4th of July weekend when a million people are on the
| beaches all up and down the west coast, that could cause
| orders of magnitude more fatalities.
| divbzero wrote:
| I don't know about how this would impact the estimates, but
| the Pacific Northwest differs from Japan in that the largest
| population centers -- Vancouver, Seattle, Portland -- are not
| exposed to the open ocean.
| jnotelddim wrote:
| I imagine it helps a bit, but even so, there are thousands
| of people who live in smaller towns along the coast.
|
| And if it happened to be during the summer, many thousands
| of people tend to be at tofino, BC at a given time -- so
| the tsunami alone could be quite bad.
|
| but also a lot of infrastructure in the bigger cities isn't
| ready for the earthquake, so even if the tsunami doesnt hit
| too hard, lots of building will go down, likely killing
| lots of us
| tomtheelder wrote:
| The population isn't really coastal. There will be a lot of
| casualties along the coast, but it is sparsely populated. The
| overall number should be much lower than the Tohoku quake.
| Some other estimates have the number considerably lower than
| FEMA's.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I love how some cultures have recordkeeping that goes back
| hundreds of years that can be tied to explain some unusual
| sediment deposits found halfway around the world.
| kibwen wrote:
| Nearby this in Oregon is Crater Lake, which is the stunning
| remnant of a catastrophic volcanic eruption 7,700 years ago.
| The volcanic explosivity index classifies it as a 7, "super-
| colossal", i.e. an order of magnitude larger than Krakatoa. And
| indeed there are Native American tribes who have passed down
| the story of the eruption over the millennia, believing it to
| be the site of a battle between gods. Super cool to see
| folklore and geology intersect.
| meepmorp wrote:
| And for our European readers:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
| flobosg wrote:
| Around the same time, in Chile:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1730_Valpara%C3%ADso_earthquak...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1751_Concepci%C3%B3n_earthquak...
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(page generated 2021-05-05 23:00 UTC)