"1,700 Foot Tidal Wave? 'Son, it's time to pray...'"

On January the 26th, 1700, sometime around 9 p.m. local time, the Juan de Fuca segment of the planet shifted- suddenly. It slipped some 60 feet eastward beneath the North American plate, and caused a monster magnitude 9 quake. It set in motion tsunamis that struck the coast of North America and traveled to the shores of Japan. Seismic research shows that these mega quakes occur every 400 to 500 years. Kim Olsen of San Diego State University (SDSU) and his team created a supercomputer-powered “virtual earthquake” program that allowed them to recreate such an event. This program encompassed the work of scientists from SDSU, San Diego Supercomputer Center at University of California/San Diego, and the U.S. Geological Survey. To ensure that the entire representation of what could happen is accurate, William Stephenson of the U.S. Geological Survey worked with Olsen and Andreas Geisselmeyer from Ulm University in Germany to create an accurate representation of the earth’s subsurface layering that area. This “velocity model” – the first of its kind – expressed how the structure will bend, reflect, and change in size and direction.

Their scenario depicted a rupture beginning in the north and propagating toward the south along the 600-mile long Cascadia Subduction Zone (an area where two tectonic plates move towards one another, forcing one to slide beneath the other). In their scenario, the ground moved about 1.5 feet per second in Seattle, nearly 6 inches per second in Tacoma, Olympia and Vancouver, and 3 inches in Portland, Oregon. “We also found that these high ground velocities were accompanied by significant low-frequency shaking, like what you feel in a roller coaster, that lasted as long as five minutes – and that’s a long time,” said Olsen. “One thing these studies will hopefully do is to raise awareness of the possibility of mega-thrust earthquakes happening at any given time in the Pacific Northwest,” Olsen added. “Because these events will tend to occur several hundred kilometers from major cities, the study also implies that the region could benefit from an early warning system that can allow time for protective actions before the brunt of the shaking starts.”

This is bad news for the North West for two reasons: one, because the combined long-duration shaking and high ground velocities raise the possibility that such an earthquake could inflict major damage on downtown Seattle; and two, areas like Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia sit on top of sediment filled geological basins, thus, amplifying the waves generated by major earthquakes. “The information from these simulations can also play a role in research into the hazards posed by large tsunamis,” added Olsen, “which can originate from such mega-thrust earthquakes like the ones generated in the 2004 Sumatra-Andeman earthquake in Indonesia.”