Northwest at risk of megaquake by Magdalena Rosova

An earthquake hotspot only 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast represents a possible threat for Seattle, Portland and Vancouver. Scientists say the hotspot can cause a similar damage that Chile has experienced recently. The fault has not been active for more than 300 years, but when it awakens it can have devastating consequences. Computer simulations of hypothetical quake says that shaking could last up to 5 minutes, but its strength would cause poorly constructed buildings in British Columbia and Northern California to collapse. Strong quake would also sent powerful tsunami waves to the shore. Fortunately, huge cities such as Portland or Seattle would be prote! cted from the flood. But the low-lying seaside cities would have serious problem. A geologist Brian Atwater says the Pacific Northwest has a long geological history of doing exactly the same what happened in Chile. He believes it is only the matter of when the quake would come. The last quake of a magnitude-9 hit the region in 1700 and sent 30- to 40-foot-tall tsunami waves, which raced across the Pacific and damaged coastal villages in Japan. Chris Goldfinger, a head of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Laboratory at Oregon State University, believes that the fault would break in the next 50 years and produce a megaquake. According to Goldfinger, there is 80 percent chance that the scary scenario would happen. Last years research showed that Seattle's building built before 1994 are at high risk of collapse in case of a superquake. Disaster managers in Oregon and Washington are working on shoring up schools, hospitals and other buildings so that they would w! ithstand a strong quake.

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by Magdalena Rosova for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

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