The Really Big One

A few weeks ago, links to this New Yorker article were popping up around the Internet. Understandably, people in the Pacific Northwest were getting particularly excited about it.

Inspired by this attention, last night the University of Oregon held a "public forum" about this. In the two hours that I was there, several scientists and an emergency response coordinator talked about what's likely to happen, what would be the cause, how measurements are being and should be taken for early warning, and what one should be prepared to do. I had to go catch my bus before they got to the question-and-answer session.

(Despite what the New Yorker article says, Eugene is far enough inland that it will avoid any tsunamis, and none but the flimsiest of buildings is likely to totally collapse. However, basic infrastructure--roads, bridges, electricity, water, sewer, food and energy distribution--are likely to take from several months to a year or more to re-establish. That's for a magnitude 9 earthquake, which is about 15% likely in the next fifty years.)

Thoughts:

1)  that we didn't really know about seismic volatility of the Pacific Northwest until just recently. There's so much yet that we don't really know, even about things of direct importance to us.

2) that the Native inhabitants had memories of earthquakes and tsunamis in their oral history, to which of course we paid no attention.

3) if the United States is to have a humane, progressive, ecologically responsible future, much of the conceptual and technological innovation is likely to come from this area. But only if Seattle and Portland (and Eugene!) continue to exist in something like our present form.

4) a thought that's harder to formulate. So much of human civilization is built with reckless disregard for the local or global environment it depends on being situated in. If we cared about what's good and worth preserving of humanity and its history and culture, we'd reduce our population to sustainable numbers, stop destroying the planet as a whole with our effluvia, located ourselves in the relatively less precarious places, leave some space to the uncounted other species that also call earth home, and work like hell to establish some outposts on other worlds as a backup. But we're doing almost nothing on any of those tasks, and won't.

5) Don't count on the government to be there to do anything but make things worse. Remember Katrina.