The Really Big One

[nexus73]

Thank you Jakeroot for posting this:

The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover.

Where I live is right on the front line of that seismic wave's path.  Coos and Curry counties are Ground Zero.  Thank you for posting such useful life-saving information.  I just hope that I am not asleep when that jolt comes for 30 seconds is all I will have to get to what I believe is the safe spot for me at home. 

Rick

[jeffandnicole]

"The Big One" has been talked about for decades, and based on predictions, it should've happened 10 or 20 years ago.

We know a lot more about it now than we did 10 or 20 years ago.

Technically, you can make anything, "Anything Proof".  But the cost in order to make it Anything Proof is astronomical, and even then, it probably isn't absolutely Anything Proof.  Just making everything 9.0 Earthquake Proof is a multi-trillion dollar venture.  And you're just hoping that when it does it, it hits in an area that make great strides to make everything 9.0 Earthquake Proof.

The best thing is to develop an early-warning system like they have in Japan. If we can get most people to a safe place before the quake or tsunami, I would be happy.

We may know a lot more about an earthquake before it happens, but that's way different than predicting when it will happen.

And based on what I'm reading here in other posts, the early warning system gives about 30-90 seconds of warning time.  It may be enough time to trigger automatic functions, but it's barely enough time to get a text alert out, have people acknowledge it, and dive under a desk or get into a safe place.  If you're in a car, the red light you're stopped at could last longer than the time between the alert and the earthquake.  If you're not in a safe place already, 90 seconds isn't going to provide the time to get to a safe place. 

[NJRoadfan]

[iBallasticwolf2]

There is no cure for stupid.

[jakeroot]

And based on what I'm reading here in other posts, the early warning system gives about 30-90 seconds of warning time.  It may be enough time to trigger automatic functions, but it's barely enough time to get a text alert out, have people acknowledge it, and dive under a desk or get into a safe place.  If you're in a car, the red light you're stopped at could last longer than the time between the alert and the earthquake.  If you're not in a safe place already, 90 seconds isn't going to provide the time to get to a safe place.

90 seconds is a pretty long time. Long enough, to say, block traffic from entering a dangerous bridge prone to collapse (e.g. the Alaskan Way Viaduct) or evacuate a small building. Larger buildings, found most often in downtown areas, are likely strong enough to resist shaking. Many buildings in the Seattle area are built on rollers, and can resist a substantial amount of shaking. Contents within the buildings are screwed (file cabinets, computer monitors, etc), but at least the building doesn't go.

From what I've read, the early warning systems can detect the initial jolt basically the second it happens. Modern computers are capable of talking to each other at a rapid pace. I'd venture to say that within maybe two or three seconds of the initial jolt, you could get the message sent to most phones, elevators, hospitals, school speakers, etc.

[Duke87]

My understanding is that what the early warning system does is tell vital but vulnerable operating equipment to alter its behavior in a way that makes it less prone to being damaged. For example, when an early warning trips, it could trigger things like:
- trains applying their brakes and coming to a stop so they aren't in motion when the quake hits, thus making them less likely to catastrophically derail
- valves in gas lines automatically closing so that ruptures in buildings do not create massive fires and explosions
- pumps at gas stations automatically shutting off so they they don't spill and start fires
- etc.

It's not meant to be a signal for people to do anything. But it can automatically trigger a lot of computer controlled actions to help reduce the damage.

[jakeroot]

It's not meant to be a signal for people to do anything. But it can automatically trigger a lot of computer controlled actions to help reduce the damage.

I'd be pretty pissed if my elevator just stopped working without telling me that there was an earthquake about to strike.

[Rothman]

90 seconds is a pretty long time. Long enough, to say, block traffic from entering a dangerous bridge prone to collapse (e.g. the Alaskan Way Viaduct) or evacuate a small building.

No, it will take much longer than 90 seconds to get emergency personnel out to the facility and safely setting up a block.  Also, the building would have to be very small-- at NYSDOT's Main Office, I don't think the building has been evacuated as quickly as 90 seconds ever and it's a medium-sized office building all said and done. 

A long time ago, I believe some aviation safety council recommended that a 737-sized airplane on fire be evacuated in 90 seconds without actually seeing if it could be done before issuing such a recommendation.  Later tests proved that there was no way you could evacuate such an airplane in such a short time (i.e., testing by actually putting a decent mix of people on a plane with even a trained crew -- couldn't be done). 

Anyway, it does seem like a long time in some regards, but there's a reason why it's counted in usually in seconds.

[vdeane]

No, it will take much longer than 90 seconds to get emergency personnel out to the facility and safely setting up a block.

One could install gate arms at the entrances and have them automatically deploy.

[jakeroot]

No, it will take much longer than 90 seconds to get emergency personnel out to the facility and safely setting up a block.

One could install gate arms at the entrances and have them automatically deploy.

I was thinking bollards but same thing.

[kkt]

It's not meant to be a signal for people to do anything. But it can automatically trigger a lot of computer controlled actions to help reduce the damage.

I'd be pretty pissed if my elevator just stopped working without telling me that there was an earthquake about to strike.

"Go to the nearest floor, open your doors, and then stay there" might be a reasonable response.

[Bruce]

Several things that Portland could do include:

1. Hardening of their highway network bridges, and including specifically a new bridge to carry I-5 traffic (but not light rail) across the Columbia River.

2. Hardening of their electric transmission infrastructure.

3. Stop with the light rail fantasy (it likely won't work after a 9.0 quake anyway).

Well, nothing is going to work after a 9.0. Light rail could be prioritized to be put back online in the second wave of relief to actually help people get to/from services that will surely be centered around what remains of downtown Portland. Sure beats riding a bus over a bumpy freeway.

Also considering the track record that railways have in Japan versus some of their freeways (see Hashin Expressway in Kobe), and considering that MAX was built later with updated earthquake standards, I'd rather be on light rail than in a car when the big one strikes.

The CRC should've been built as a highway bridge with the guideway for a light rail extension. Vancouver really should've taken the offer to get a free pass into one of the most extensive light rail networks in the nation, even if it barely made its way into downtown.

[KEK Inc.]

Several things that Portland could do include:

1. Hardening of their highway network bridges, and including specifically a new bridge to carry I-5 traffic (but not light rail) across the Columbia River.

2. Hardening of their electric transmission infrastructure.

3. Stop with the light rail fantasy (it likely won't work after a 9.0 quake anyway).

Well, nothing is going to work after a 9.0. Light rail could be prioritized to be put back online in the second wave of relief to actually help people get to/from services that will surely be centered around what remains of downtown Portland. Sure beats riding a bus over a bumpy freeway.

Also considering the track record that railways have in Japan versus some of their freeways (see Hashin Expressway in Kobe), and considering that MAX was built later with updated earthquake standards, I'd rather be on light rail than in a car when the big one strikes.

The CRC should've been built as a highway bridge with the guideway for a light rail extension. Vancouver really should've taken the offer to get a free pass into one of the most extensive light rail networks in the nation, even if it barely made its way into downtown.

I don't see how light rail would be an improvement to buses or practical in any destructive tremor.  The same 'bumpy freeway' argument can be used for any mass transit ROW.  A bus doesn't have to stay on a track that will potentially have debris and damage on it.  Not to mention, this assumes electricity will be working and that none of the overhead power-lines are compromised.

Japan also has a much stronger rail network than SoundTransit or MAX.

[cpzilliacus]

Well, nothing is going to work after a 9.0. Light rail could be prioritized to be put back online in the second wave of relief to actually help people get to/from services that will surely be centered around what remains of downtown Portland. Sure beats riding a bus over a bumpy freeway.

Sorry, I must disagree.  Do you think the Steel Bridge over the  Willamette River (according to the hyperlinked Wikipedia article, opened in 1912), is going to survive a 9.0?  While there were plenty of good civil and structural engineers in the U.S. back then, how many of them knew about the seismic hazards of the Pacific Northwest then? 

Doesn't every MAX line pass over that bridge?  Which was a pretty bumpy ride on the several trips by MAX train I took crossing that span (when I visited Portland some years ago).

Also considering the track record that railways have in Japan versus some of their freeways (see Hashin Expressway in Kobe), and considering that MAX was built later with updated earthquake standards, I'd rather be on light rail than in a car when the big one strikes.

If you are on MAX, that train is going to come to an immediate halt as soon as the power goes out (as it presumably will in a 9.0).

The CRC should've been built as a highway bridge with the guideway for a light rail extension. Vancouver really should've taken the offer to get a free pass into one of the most extensive light rail networks in the nation, even if it barely made its way into downtown.

Built as a highway bridge with added lane capacity. 

I can assure you that getting involved in any light rail system will not be a "free pass" for the taxpayers of Washington.

[triplemultiplex]

Oh, shit, Goldfinger thought, although not in dread, at first: in amazement. For decades, seismologists had believed that Japan could not experience an earthquake stronger than magnitude 8.4. In 2005, however, at a conference in Hokudan, a Japanese geologist named Yasutaka Ikeda had argued that the nation should expect a magnitude 9.0 in the near future–with catastrophic consequences, because Japan's famous earthquake-and-tsunami preparedness, including the height of its sea walls, was based on incorrect science. The presentation was met with polite applause and thereafter largely ignored. Now, Goldfinger realized as the shaking hit the four-minute mark, the planet was proving the Japanese Cassandra right.

I find it shocking this was the thinking in Japan after 1964.
Between the 9+ earthquakes experienced in Chile and Alaska at subduction zones around that time I would have to think that everyone would have no choice but to accept the reality that any place with a subduction zone could experience one of these devastating quakes.
The benefit of hindsight, though...

[cpzilliacus]

Follow-up article in the New Yorker from a week or two ago:  How to Stay Safe When the Big One Comes

For most of the past three years, I've worked as a book critic, which is not a job that affords me many opportunities to scare the living daylights out of my readers. (Authors, occasionally; readers, no.) But earlier this month, when a story I wrote about a dangerous fault line in the Pacific Northwest hit the newsstands, the overwhelming response was alarm. "Terrifying,"  the story kept getting called; also "truly terrifying,"  "incredibly terrifying,"  "horrifying,"  and "scary as fuck."  "Don't read it if you want to go back to sleep,"  one reader warned. "It's hard to overhype how scary it is,"  Buzzfeed said. "New Yorker scares the bejesus out of NW,"  the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote.

Novelists and screenwriters can terrify people, feel pretty good about themselves, and call it a day. But for journalists, or at least this one, fear is not an end in itself. At best, it is a means to an end, a way to channel emotion into action. To achieve that, however, you need to navigate between the twin obstacles of panic (which makes you do all the wrong things) and fatalism (which makes you do nothing). In an effort to help people to do so, I've answered, below, some of the questions I've heard most often since the story was published, and also provided a little advice about how best to prepare for the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami, and their aftermath.

The Cascadia subduction zone runs from Cape Mendocino, California, to Vancouver Island, Canada. Those who live anywhere in that region and west of the Cascade Mountains are at risk–but how much risk and what kind varies considerably, based on where exactly you live in relationship to the fault line, how susceptible your area is to liquefaction and landslides, what kind of structure you're in when the quake occurs, and your local seismic codes. In general, however, the shaking will be strongest on the coast and diminish somewhat as you move inland.