If the film San Andreas freaked the living daylights out of you then stop reading NOW.
A huge earthquake is, according to experts, long overdue to strike the US, but California, often the worst-affected area, will not be the centre point of this one.
Instead, according to the New Yorker, a quake centred at a fault-line known as the Cascadia subduction zone, several hundred miles long, means that those living in the regions of Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and Olympia will be most at risk. The article reads:
“The odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten.”
If that doesn’t worry you then maybe what the report says next will:
“When the next-full margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is predicting that when this epic quake strikes, close to 13,000 people will die as a result, while 27,000 more will suffer injury. In addition, the agency has predicted it will need to provide relief for more than a million people displaced due to destruction or damage caused to their homes. To put that into perspective, 3000 people died when an earthquake struck San Francisco in 1906.
Although no one can positively identify as of yet just how strong this quake, the report goes onto give its own projection:
“somewhere between a 8.7 and 9.2.”
The last confirmed Cascadia Subduction Zone quake occurred 300 years ago meaning that another quake is well overdue. The zone itself has caused dozens of earthquakes in the past, but it would seem that there really are great concerns over the damage this next one could do.
Are you concerned by these latest reports? Have you experienced earthquakes in the past? Get involved with the story and let us know in the comments!
