The Next Big Tsunami?

The Pacific Northwest faces serious risk from a huge tsunami waiting to happen, according to testimony at a Congressional hearing yesterday on lessons learned from the March 11 tsunami in Japan.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone, which lies about 75 miles off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, could generate a quake and tsunami the size of the one that battered Japan last month, according to Brigadier General Mike Caldwell, deputy director of the State of Oregon Military Department and interim director of the state's Emergency Management Agency. He was speaking at a hearing of the Subcommittee on National Security of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

This offshore fault has not generated a quake since 1700, according to the smart Wikipedia folks, and Caldwell said the Cascadia zone "is over 100 years beyond its cycle of causing a major 8-9 magnitude earthquake. It's a known major disaster waiting to happen."

If such a quake and ensuing tsunami happens, Caldwell said, coastal residents will have between six and seven minutes of warning. That could put a real damper on plans to buy Pacific Northwest beachfront real estate.