Before I start I'll get this right out, I am perfectly aware this post will interest almost no one.
I've chosen to write about this because 1. I'm a bit of an amateur geology buff 2. I was up late last night watching YouTube vids on the 21st Century Megathrust Earthquakes, Dec. 24th 2004 just off the Indonesian coast in the Indian Ocean
...and the 2011 Japan quake & tsunami. This video is a visualization map similar to but VASTLY more detailed than the above map simulation, but focusing on the quake rather than the tsunami. It opens with an explanation of the symbolism used, then there's a bit of a boring stretch between January 1 and March 9th. Then, it gets fascinating. At 1:49 there's a 7.2 quake, then the big 9.0 at 1:51. From that point forward, thousands of quakes occur for nearly the rest of 2011. This is followed by a series of graph charts underscoring the magnitude of this event
Both of these disasters occurred on subduction zones, the point at which oceanic plates meet continental plates. I live on one of these zones, the
Cascadia Subduction Zone. Look at this area, it is pretty clearly a rift zone.
There's no question in my mind that Vancouver Island and Puget Sound have over millions of years pulled away from the continent. This takes millions of cataclysmic seismic events, as did Japan and Indonesia. There is no question as to IF this immense quake will happen here, but only as to when.
The last such megathrust quake in this part of the word was January of 1700
This event could happen anytime, according to the frequency of the geological evidence it should happenanytime between the next three seconds to five hundred years from now.
The good news is that the major cities in the area, Vancouver/Victoria BC, Stattle/Everett/Tacoma/Olympia WA, and Portland/Salem/Eugene OR are not going to be substantially hit by any destructive tsunami as was so devastating in 2004/2011 (in fact Hawaii and Japan are in much greater danger from this), the major cities here are too far inland, The principle damage would be direct damage to buildings (esp. older brick-and-mortar structures) and landslides.
I think this sometimes when I'm on a major bridge. Not today, please. Not now.