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Pacific Northwest Earthquake Case Study

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Saying that the Pacific Northwest is in trouble would be an understatement. There have been rumors that Seattle is going to take a huge hit in the near future. This upcoming earthquake may be news to most Washingtonians or others may just be in denial of the whole situation. The seismologists have been doing research on the Cascadia subduction zone, which is a convergent plate boundary that runs for 700 miles off the Pacific Northwest, and starts from northern California and goes all the way to Vancouver Island. A subduction zone is the place where one tectonic plate slides underneath another.
However, in this case, the North American tectonic plate is stuck and is wedged against the oceanic plate called Juan de Fuca. With all the pressure building up, the edge of North America is bulging upward at a rate of over an inch each year. There is a stopping point and soon North America will suddenly spring out and push back the other plate. If the whole zone moves, then it is predicted that this will create a full rupture with a magnitude between 8.7 and 9.2. An earthquake that has a magnitude of 8.0 or greater is considered the …show more content…

Some of these movements will be below the ocean, which will automatically force out an enormous amount of seawater. All that water will shoot up and then come crashing down, with one side charging towards the west and the other towards the east. Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, that 700-mile liquid wall will hit the Northwest coast. It is predicted that the combination of the earthquake and the tsunami, will result in 13,000 people killed and the Pacific Northwest totally wiped out and destroyed. Not only is it terrifying that the odds of this big hit are one in ten, but also the fact that people are not even preparing for this natural disaster. This could easily be the worst earthquake and tsunami in all of North

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