A conversation with Seattle
Doughton’s story focuses on the geological record and its implications for the Northwest. Does the region face an offshore mega-quake and tsunami on the scale of Japan’s 3/11/11 event that will kill thousands and devastate the economy, or a series of magnitude 8 offshore quake and tsunami events that will cumulatively be nearly as devastating? Continue reading “Full Rip 9.0” Uncovers the Northwest’s Earthquake Dangers
Two years and 11 days after the 2011 tsunami ravaged Japan’s coast, a 20-foot boat called the Sai-shou-maru washed up on the Washington coast near Long Beach. Empty of human life, it carried an unusual live cargo: five striped beakfish, with some “30 to 50 species of plants and animals” total, said staff at Washington State’s Department of Ecology. Continue reading Japanese Tsunami Yields Up a Real-Life “Life of Pi” Scene
Using very conservative assumptions about how much sea level is rising, City of Seattle planners project that within the next 40 years, storm surges and high tides will flood new areas of Seattle. While the sea level is expected to rise six inches, that coupled with an extreme event could raise the water by three to four feet. Continue reading Eyeing Floods of 2050, Seattle Prepares to Hike its Skirt
The best analogy for the impacts of tsunami debris, explains Ebbesmeyer, is the 150-ton concrete-and-metal dock that washed up on the Oregon coast. More than 50 feet in length and about ten feet “tall,” less than a foot of it was visible in the water. Like the debris field, it was almost impossible to spot in open water, a hazard to marine navigation, and a Trojan horse of sorts: the dock was carrying more than 90 different, potentially invasive, species that were destroyed. Continue reading Tons of Japan’s Tsunami Debris Due on West Coast
Last week, a 150-foot Japanese fishing boat (outfitted for squid-fishing, to be precise) was spotting drifting, unmanned, about 150 nautical miles off B.C.’s Queen Charlotte Islands, and its arrival raised, more urgently, the question of what is to be done about the bulk of the debris when it arrives. (“Bulk” in abstract sense; the ocean will have had the chance to break up the debris into smaller and smaller pieces, scientists think.) Because not much is being done. Continue reading “What’s the Plan for Tsunami Debris?” You Ask
Something Sendai this way floats, and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) doesn’t want to wait until its projected 2014 arrival on West Coast shores to get ready for it. (Hawaii should see tsunami debris in 2013.)
After the 9.0 earthquake hit Japan on March 11 of this year, the ensuing tsunami swept more than 200,000 houses (not to mention boats and cars) out to sea, where oceanographers predict they will make a slow journey to the West Coast, stopping off first at the Hawaiian Islands. Continue reading Tsunami Debris Field Floating to West Coast Landfall (Photo Gallery)
“Where is the last place that I would want to be, during a big Seattle Fault earthquake or a subduction zone quake if there was a reasonable-sized tsunami in Puget Sound?” Montgomery added, finishing his thought. “The last place I’d want to be is in a big hole under the waterfront.”
However compelling he is in laying all this out, short-term catastrophes are not what Montgomery spends most of his time thinking about. His last book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, is required reading for anyone who’s read Jared Diamond’s Collapse. Continue reading The Dirt on Seattle’s Tunnel-Vision Future