An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.
The next full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent. When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.
