People of the Northwest: Run!

Dear People of the Pacific Northwest:

If the Sasquatches don’t get you first, the Cascadia Fault will. Run! Excerpt:

People in the United States and Canada, if they think at all about earthquake disasters, probably conjure up theSan Andreas fault in the worst-case scenario. In California, as they wait for “the Big One,” people wonder which city the San Andreas will wreck next—San Francisco or Los Angeles? But if by the Big One they mean the earthquake that will wreak havoc over the widest geographic area, that could destroy the most critical infrastructure, that could send a train of tsunamis across the Pacific causing economic mayhem that would probably last a decade or more—then the seismic demon to blame could not possibly be the San Andreas. It would have to be Cascadia’s fault.

One year after Japan’s devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, scientists are still trying to figure out how the world’s most organized and earthquake-ready nation could have been taken so much by surprise. They were hit by an earthquake roughly 
25 times more powerful than experts thought 
possible in that part of the country. How could the forecast have been so wrong? The short answer is they didn’t look far enough back in geologic time to see that quakes and tsunamis just this big had indeed occurred there before.

I’m glad I live in a part of the country where natural mega-disasters don’t happen. Oh, wait…

Seriously, my favorite part of living in eastern Pennsylvania was the relatively mild weather. Never too hot, rarely too cold. Four actual seasons. Tornadoes almost never. A really strong thunderstorm there was a below-average thunderstorm for Texas and Louisiana.