What a geologist professer said about survival

[BlackdogGS]

i just got back from a presentation about geological events in the NW. Afterwards I had to a chance to talk to the speaker.

The chances of a major cascading subduction earthquake is Inevitable. I could be soon or very soon.
If you live on or near the coast you will have about 10 minutes to get 1,000 feet above sea level. He said if he lived there he would have an atv gassed and packed, ready to go.

I live in The Dalles where the presentation was given. He said The Dalles would become a refugee destination, one of the first places to be attracted by the west side.

He was an older gent, maybe 70 but still maintaind 3 months of food and water. After all this he mentioned his main conscearn was a terrorist attack on the Columbia River dams.

I wish I could have spent more time with him.

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[djaziatic]

Interesting. Did he say anything about how Bonneville Dam would hold up to the earthquake?

 

[BlackdogGS]

Interesting. Did he say anything about how Bonneville Dam would hold up to the earthquake?

He said the surge would reach the damn but would not harm it.

 

[Stomper]

As long as PDX gets a good flush-out I'm good!




Just kidding.... sorta.

 

[djaziatic]

What if the earthquake causes Mt. Hood to blow? I'm in Portland so i'd be trapped in the middle! lol

 

[Sgt Nambu]

Better the middle of catastrophe........than the Dalles!

 

[PaulB47]

10 minutes to get 1,000 feet above sea level.

Kinda hard to get that high in the coast range.

It's strange his estimate would be so much higher than what the coastal tsunami maps show. Here is Lincoln City:
Tsunami Evacuation Maps

 

[therealhitman]

It's strange his estimate would be so much higher than what the coastal tsunami maps show.

I would think when many, many miles of plate edge give and slide past each other it will be several times the magnitude of any offshore quake/tsunami seen before. My fear is that the estimates of carnage are too low.

 

[transittech]

Did he say where he lives? I'm wondering where he thinks the ideal place to live is?

 

[Brutus57]

Yes, it will happen, tomorrow, 10 days from tomorrow, 10,000 days from tomorrow or 10,000 years. PLAN, Plan, Plan but don't panic. I think 90 days food & water is good. 1,000 feet tsunami? Possible but not very likely. Political earthquakes concern me more than natural disasters.

Brutus Out

 

[Alex V]

It was probably more like a hundred feet. But still very hard to get to on the coast if you're not ready and in the right spot. The chances are great that it will happen in my lifetime, but yes it may not happen for another couple centuries either. Only the coast would be affected by the tsunami. Inland, it's the poorly equipped and ageing infrastructure that is the problem. What we're facing is an 8 to 9 level earthquake exactly like the one that struck Japan in 2011. They are the most seismically prepared nation on earth and they still lost some 13,000 people. Seattle and Portland as well as other cities are no where near as ready as Japanese cities were. Government estimates are a few months before the most basic services would be restored along the I5 corridor. A few years before it's back to fully functional.

 

[P7M13]

@Alex V is right, to have an idea of what a quake off Oregon's coast would do to us, look to Japan's 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. We don't have the dense population centers along the coast as they do there, so don't know if we'd experience 15K+ dead like they did. The Tsunami was the most damaging to them, I believe the seismic destruction will be the most damaging for us.
I would stay the F away from The Dalles or any city along the Columbia - I think a tide surge would create enough trouble, there's no sense in being near the water.
My wife was terrified about all the media hysteria last year and begged to move.

Geologists have said, the big one will happen along the southern Oregon coast, Coos Bay or points south. If you consider, with Japan's earthquake, they were expecting the earthquake to happen south of Tokyo, but it happened ~240 miles north of their original speculation, and easily 10x stronger than what they thought possible. My point being, prepare, because who knows when, what or where it will come.

If you want to think about the effects that _may_ be felt in Portland, the ridge that follows the Willamette (Forest Park, West Hills, Skyline Rd) is a fault scarpment, not the kind that gradually rose to its prominence, but one that got there cataclysmically. Let that sink in. What I told my wife was not to worry about something we couldn't control, and pray you're outside when the big one hits, because most structures you see will probably not be standing.

As far as Hood erupting in conjunction with an earthquake, they are very different as well as unlikely. If magma had been rising (we would know from a bunch of earthquakes), there might be some correlation.
With volcanoes like ours, the hazard to worry about is not the eruption (unless you live on top of it), but the lahar, or mud flow, that follows. The lahars from past eruption events have been mapped, and if I recall my lectures correctly, Portland is right in the path of one if a major eruption occurs on Hood.

Preparation is key. Think about this: if your house were to collapse, are your bugout kit & supplies located in a place where they can most likely be easily extracted from the rubble?
If they were in the basement in the center of your house, do you think you could easily get to them?

 

[wired]

Having lived in The Dalles for years I dont know where you are going to put the refugees. There isnt the infrastructure there for even 500 more people.

 

[wired]

@Alex Vs.
I would stay the F away from The Dalles or any city along the Columbia - I think a tide surge would create enough trouble, there's no sense in being near the water.

The Dalles isnt going to get any tidal surges . Theres a few dams that are going to be in the way.

 

[P7M13]

The Dalles isnt going to get any tidal surges . Theres a few dams that are going to be in the way.

D'oh! Thanks for the correction. Shows you how often I head up the Columbia.

 

[Libertas7]

Don't animals start acting up before a earthquake or something?

 

[Alex V]

Don't animals start acting up before a earthquake or something?

There's a compression wave, or something like that that animals sense, but humans really can't. Japan actually has an early detection system that senses this wave and shuts down things like the trains and gas lines. Also triggers warnings. The U.S. does not have anything like that in place.

 

[kilimanjaro]

A few years back my cat perked up from a nap and sat waiting for something, a few seconds later the tremor from a 3.5 quake centered a few miles away arrived. It certainly knew something was happening.

 

[DB is Here]

A few years back my cat perked up from a nap and sat waiting for something, a few seconds later the tremor from a 3.5 quake centered a few miles away arrived. It certainly knew something was happening.

My dog does that, but it's often followed by him gassing us out of the room...so not super reliable. LOL

 

[kilimanjaro]

I have only the one event to correlate !