06-25-2011, 07:51 AM
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index..._sure.html
A Japanese flag flies above wreckage in front of the city hospital in Onagawa, a community devastated by the March 11 tsunami and 9-magnitude earthquake. Experts estimate that at least 5,000 Oregonians will die in a similar quake and tsunami here. The only question, they say, is when.
Excerpt: "...Within the next 50 years, (experts) say, Washington and northern Oregon face a 10 to 15 percent probability of an offshore quake powerful enough to kill thousands and launch a tsunami that would level coastal cities. Off southern Oregon, the probability of an 8-or-higher magnitude earthquake is greater -- 37 percent, according to Oregon State University's Chris Goldfinger, one of the world's top experts on subduction-zone quakes.
Goldfinger and other authorities who spoke at a Portland conference this week say the Northwest is dangerously unprepared for a massive quake they consider inevitable at some point. At least 300,000 Oregon children attend school in buildings vulnerable to collapse when the Big One comes.
"I think every parent should know this," said Kit Miyamoto, an earthquake engineer from Japan whose company is helping repair quake-damaged structures in Haiti. "Those schools should be banned."
Earthquake experts are speaking with new urgency after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 24,000 March 11, shattering long-held assumptions on safety and survival. A much smaller New Zealand quake in February showed what can happen in a city similar to Portland, killing 181 and destroying thousands of houses.
Researchers say giant tectonic plates off Oregon's coast are locked in a slow-motion collision, accumulating energy that will ultimately be released when sections of Earth's crust slip. An earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone could launch a tsunami resembling Japan's towering tidal wave, flattening Seaside and other low-lying cities.
Oregon is not nearly as prepared as Japan for a major earthquake, let alone a tsunami, said experts at the meeting held Friday in Portland State University's seismically reinforced Lincoln Hall. Oregon stores much of its liquid fuel, for example, in tanks on soil prone to liquefaction along the Willamette River north of Portland.
Japan built sea walls and other elaborate fortifications to withstand a tsunami from an 8.2-magnitude quake, the maximum officials expected along the country's northeast coast. But one scientist, Yasutaka Ikeda of Tokyo University, predicted 10 years ago that a 9-magnitude earthquake would shake the region.
"Nobody listened to him," Goldfinger told an audience at the meeting held by the American Institute of Architects Portland. "They just prepared for the wrong thing..."
A Japanese flag flies above wreckage in front of the city hospital in Onagawa, a community devastated by the March 11 tsunami and 9-magnitude earthquake. Experts estimate that at least 5,000 Oregonians will die in a similar quake and tsunami here. The only question, they say, is when.
Excerpt: "...Within the next 50 years, (experts) say, Washington and northern Oregon face a 10 to 15 percent probability of an offshore quake powerful enough to kill thousands and launch a tsunami that would level coastal cities. Off southern Oregon, the probability of an 8-or-higher magnitude earthquake is greater -- 37 percent, according to Oregon State University's Chris Goldfinger, one of the world's top experts on subduction-zone quakes.
Goldfinger and other authorities who spoke at a Portland conference this week say the Northwest is dangerously unprepared for a massive quake they consider inevitable at some point. At least 300,000 Oregon children attend school in buildings vulnerable to collapse when the Big One comes.
"I think every parent should know this," said Kit Miyamoto, an earthquake engineer from Japan whose company is helping repair quake-damaged structures in Haiti. "Those schools should be banned."
Earthquake experts are speaking with new urgency after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 24,000 March 11, shattering long-held assumptions on safety and survival. A much smaller New Zealand quake in February showed what can happen in a city similar to Portland, killing 181 and destroying thousands of houses.
Researchers say giant tectonic plates off Oregon's coast are locked in a slow-motion collision, accumulating energy that will ultimately be released when sections of Earth's crust slip. An earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone could launch a tsunami resembling Japan's towering tidal wave, flattening Seaside and other low-lying cities.
Oregon is not nearly as prepared as Japan for a major earthquake, let alone a tsunami, said experts at the meeting held Friday in Portland State University's seismically reinforced Lincoln Hall. Oregon stores much of its liquid fuel, for example, in tanks on soil prone to liquefaction along the Willamette River north of Portland.
Japan built sea walls and other elaborate fortifications to withstand a tsunami from an 8.2-magnitude quake, the maximum officials expected along the country's northeast coast. But one scientist, Yasutaka Ikeda of Tokyo University, predicted 10 years ago that a 9-magnitude earthquake would shake the region.
"Nobody listened to him," Goldfinger told an audience at the meeting held by the American Institute of Architects Portland. "They just prepared for the wrong thing..."