learn something – earthquakes

My first “learn something” is about earthquakes… specifically a giant one that could wipe out the PNW. I know it’s not a normal blog post, but read it and I promise you’ll learn something.

A few years ago, seismologists in the US and Japan made an incredible discovery about a devastating earthquake that occurred in the year 1700 and is scheduled to occur again, right about now, in the Pacific Northwest. The New Yorker put out an article earlier this year called The Really Big One. It was terrifying to thousands of people who had no idea that such a potentially devastating earthquake was expected to destroy the entire Pacific Northwest. It’s an incredibly interesting read, and forecasts the probability of an earthquake and tsunami, and describes how unprepared the region is.

It blows my mind that scientists were able to pinpoint the details of the 1700 Cascadian earthquake, and predict that another will happen (at 9:41am on February 6th). Even more so, it terrifies me that more people don’t know about this, and are unprepared. I dread the day that news of this earthquake spreads across the country, and we learn of the lives that were lost.I am in LOVE with the Pacific Northwest, and now that we’ve visited the Oregon coastline, it makes it so much more real to me to imagine such an incredible natural disaster.