Pacific NW Seismic Fault is Fully Loaded

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Seismic fault beneath us is ‘fully loaded’ after 311 years

January 26, 2011
As if you didn’t have enough worries, here is one more to add to that massive list:

“It’s been 300 years,” Bill Steele said Tuesday. “We have a fully loaded subduction zone.”

Actually, it’s been 311 years since the Great Cascadia Earthquake of 1700.

Steele, a University of Washington seismologist and spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, said scientists have determined the monster quake occurred Jan. 26, 1700 — 311 years ago tonight…

.…Steele said it takes hundreds of years to build up the strain that causes a subduction zone earthquake. “The toe of North America, the edge, is being shoved downward. It’s like bending a ruler back,” he said, adding that the 1700 quake was the last one known to have occurred on the Cascadia subduction zone.

Remember — it’s “fully loaded.”

“It could produce another one tomorrow, or maybe a century or more away,” Steele said. “Certainly geologically, in the not too distant future we’re going to have another one.”

Steele is all for being prepared — whether it’s keeping supplies on hand at home, making sure homes and public buildings are up to withstanding big quakes, or assuring that people who live on the coast have evacuation routes.

It takes money, and recognizing the risks.

“Our purpose here is not to scare people,” Steele said.

http://heraldnet.com/article/20110126/NEWS01/701269810/-1/news01


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