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Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America

Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America

Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America
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Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America

Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America

Overview

A thrillingly rendered, yet “level–headed” look at the Cascadia Subduction Zone and the devastating natural disasters it promises (Booklist)

There is a crack in the earth's crust that runs roughly 31 miles offshore, approximately 683 miles from Northern California up through Vancouver Island off the coast of British Columbia. The Cascadia Subduction Zone has generated massive earthquakes over and over again throughout geologic time—at least thirty–six major events in the last 10,000 years. This fault generates a monster earthquake about every 500 years. And the monster is due to return at any time. It could happen 200 years from now, or it could be tonight.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is virtually identical to the offshore fault that wrecked Sumatra in 2004. It will generate the same earthquake we saw in Sumatra, at magnitude nine or higher, sending crippling shockwaves across a far wider area than any California quake. Slamming into Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver, it will send tidal waves to the shores of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, damaging the economies of the Pacific Rim countries and their trading partners for years to come.

In light of recent massive quakes in Haiti, Chile, and Mexico, Cascadia's Fault not only tells the story of this potentially devastating earthquake and the tsunamis it will spawn, it also warns us about an impending crisis almost unprecedented in modern history.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781582438245
Publisher: Catapult
Publication date: 04/17/2012
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 408
Sales rank: 1,094,384
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jerry Thompson is an award–winning documentary filmmaker living outside of Vancouver. For twenty years, he worked as a as a network news correspondent and a documentary film producer for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has written articles for Equinox and Vancouver magazine, and has produced and narrated a half–dozen highly regarded television documentary specials on Cascadia's fault that received wide critical praise.

Table of Contents

Maps vii

Foreword Simon Winchester xi

Introduction xvii

Part 1 Tremors and Riffles

1 Mexico City: Preview of Coming Events 3

2 Lessons from the Rubble: A Front-Page Story 13

3 The Alaska Megathrust: Cascadia's Northern Cousin 29

4 Against the Wind of Convention: Plafker, Benioff, and Press 43

5 Cauldron and Crust: The Rehabilitation of Continental Drift 53

6 Nuke on a Fault: Early Clues in Humboldt Bay 61

7 Proving the Doubters Wrong: The Chile Connection 70

8 Mount St. Helens: Cascadia's Smoking Gun? 78

Part 2 Setbacks and Breakthroughs

9 Mud Cores and Lasers: The Search for Evidence 95

10 The Whoops Factor: Cascadia's True Nature Revealed 113

11 Quake Hunters: Finding Cascadia's Ghost Forest 125

12 Cedars, Peat, and Turbidites: A Tipping Point at Monmouth 134

13 Cascadia's Segmented Past: Apocalypse or Decades of Terror? 147

14 Digital Water: Catching Waves in a Computer 161

15 Defining the Zone: Hot Rocks and High Water 177

16 Cracks, Missing Rings, and Native Voices: Closing In on a Killer Quake 190

17 The Orphan Tsunami: Final Proof of Cascadia's Last Rupture 200

18 Episodic Tremor and Slip: Tracking Cascadia with GPS 212

19 Turbidite Timeline: Cascadia's Long and Violent History 221

20 When's This Going to Happen? The Problems with Prediction 233

Part 3 Shockwaves

21 Facing Reality: Cascadia Equals Sumatra 269

22 The Next Wave: Thinking the Unthinkable 278

23 Watching It Happen, Wishing It Wouldn't 288

24 Cascadia's Fault: Day of Reckoning 300

Epilogue: Survival and Resilience, a State of Mind 309

Afterword 319

Acknowledgments 337

Suggestions for Further Reading 339

Index 349

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