Now I'm scared...
So when I saw this sign in Manzanita on Oregon's coast in January of this year, I had a good laugh at it... and then I saw a documentary on the Cascadia Subduction Zone on ABC TV tonight.
Eek.
A 9.1 earthquake just off the Pacific Northwest coast. An earthquake that would last for over four minutes and bring tsunami waves crashing onto the coast from Northern California to British Columbia in far less time than the authorities could do anything useful with... like warning people. The last one happened 300 years ago and is recorded in Native American oral history and written village records in Japan, as the resultant tsunamis sped across the Pacific and smashed into that faraway land with terrifying force.
According to the documentary, most of the major Pacific Northwest cities will be somewhat safe as they're located off the coast, but it's still a little unnerving. Australia is such an old continent, with very few earthquakes and no volcanoes at all... America is geologically young and active... and documentaries like that just make it all a little more real and scary.
Maybe I should stop watching TV?
Posted in: chaosboy, portland, united states on March 8, 2007 at at 2:41:00 AM
