![]() And for good reason: It’s hard to focus on an invisible fault line fracturing when a global contagion is actively killing people. As life in Cascadia carries on-strong rain, stronger coffee, Birkenstocks aplenty-the COVID-19 pandemic has become public enemy No. Worse yet, a magnitude-9 rupture along the CSZ could trigger the San Andreas as well.īut for most residents of the region, that threat is mounting far offstage. It would be an unavoidable economic and humanitarian disaster from Vancouver Island to northern California. ![]() Buildings would crumble, and thousands would die. Schulz’s story explains exactly what could happen should the CSZ shake the earth with its full seismic potential. For most residents of the region, the threat is mounting far offstage. The odds of a lesser but still major event are even greater. There’s a one-in-10 chance that the next major Cascadia quake will occur sometime in the next 50 years. Seven times in the past 3,500 years, the CSZ has buckled and fractured to produce an earthquake so massive that it left a mark in the geologic record. The story by Kathryn Schulz, titled “ The Really Big One,” reminded some about-and introduced many more to-the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), a geological hotspot that rivals the famous San Andreas Fault. Cultural touchstones-from Nirvana and Bob Barker to Father’s Day and the computer mouse-have their roots here.īy almost any measure Cascadia-a term born of the 1970s environmental movement to describe the Pacific Northwest’s geography and cultural identity-is a strange and beautiful place.īut just offshore from the postcard-worthy landscapes is a seismic threat as catastrophic as any on earth.īack in 2015, a prominent New Yorker article sounded the alarm on Cascadia’s tsunami and earthquake problem. Aquatic species, from barnacles to sea otters, thrive in the pockets of habitat created by the coastline’s sinuous edges. Tall, dense forests of pine, spruce, and cedar blanket the bioregion. The tail extends north to the southern tip of Alaska, and the whale’s open mouth, facing south, just catches northern California. Mountainous Vancouver Island is the pectoral fin. British Columbia’s temperate rainforest forms the bulk of its body, along with Washington state, Idaho, and much of Oregon. If you look at a world map, Cascadia is shaped like a whale swimming south.
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