Posted on 04/18/2019 1:04:46 PM PDT by Ezekiel
Findings by a team led by an Oregon State University geotechnical engineer are paving the way toward engineering techniques that could keep Pacific Northwest residents safer during the eventual Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.
By Steve Lundeberg, Oregon State University
Ben Mason of the OSU College of Engineering led a National Science Foundation-supported team that traveled to Indonesia to study the aftermath of the magnitude 7.5 Palu-Donggala quake that occurred in September 2018.
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Roughly 85 miles off the Pacific shoreline, the Cascadia Subduction Zone is a 600-mile fault running from northern California to British Columbia. Over the last 10,000 years, there have been 41 earthquakes along the fault; the time between quakes ranges from 190 to 1,200 years, with the last one an estimated magnitude 9.0 temblor in 1700.
The Geotechnical Extreme Events Recognizance Association, known as GEER, is a 30-year-old volunteer organization of geotechnical engineers, engineering geologists and earth scientists whose mission is to obtain post-disaster information that can advance research and improve engineering practice.
GEER researchers studied five different quake-caused landslides and found unlined irrigation canals canals without any bed barrier to prevent seepage were an exacerbating factor. Such canals also exist throughout agricultural lands in areas that will be affected by the Cascadia Subduction quake.
A substantial majority of the fatalities were directly related to landslides, Mason said. Some of the slides occurred along ground with relatively low relief average grades of around 2 to 4% and many of them traveled about a kilometer. In at least one location, a breached canal triggered a mudflow that engulfed the initial landslide mass.
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(Excerpt) Read more at northcoastcitizen.com ...
We can't stop hurricanes either, but just think of how many fewer people die from them now, compared to 100 - 200 years ago, despite many more people living in harm's way, today. This comes from understanding (study) and ability to get warnings out, have time to get people "out", etc.
Our understanding of volcanoes and earthquakes is likely at a stage similar to what we knew about hurricanes a hundred, maybe 200 years ago. So, we have a lot to learn. Once we do learn more, we'll still be powerless (or foolish) to stop or mitigate them, most likely, but we will know better how to save lives.
Agreed. Ask people in an active volcano / earthquake zone like the Philippines, about landslides...
Truth be told, that article is roundly-mocked in both public & private preparedness circles in the NW. I should know.
Here’s the deal: Libs on the left coast don’t care a damned thing about the people. Look to San Francisco’s controversies following the 1906 quake for clues.
Former Oregon Gov. Kitzhaber’s girlfriend and one-time ‘first lady’ of the state was fined today for misusing her position to land lucrative ‘green’ contracts.
The hypocrisy is rather stunning: Lib regional planners (all on the public pension dole) argue that Cascadia is cyclical, yet these same geniuses deny that climate has the same cycles.
All libs care about are their public-sponsored pensions and money. The so-called ‘studies’ are pork, no different than those on ‘climate change’.
The New Yorker article contains some fair details, but it’s a work of fiction if you consider one factor:
Tohoku was very similar to that which is forecast to hit the NW. Try to find evidence of widespread shaking damage inland from what they ‘scarecast’ to be the “big one” at 9.0.
The whole thing is one bad joke, particularly-considering that more people will die in the weeks after the quake (haves & have-nots) while the left coast states who proclaim to be “studying” to “make the states safer” do absolutely NOTHING to be self-sufficient while waiting for the oft-delayed FEMA aid...
Case-in-point: I was party to a session on emergency preparedness and drinking water. The only speakers presented by the city were a private company selling stuff to boil water for emergency purposes and the local utility’s fed-sponsored water trucks (i.e., get dependent upon government via your local utility).
More likely they surfed the successive tsunami waves and wound up on the summit of the Cascades... and its all downhill from there to Sandpoint.
Heck! If you want to save lives do this. Abolish cars and highways. Between 30 and 40 thousand lives are lost per year in car accidents, or abolish abortion. 800 thousand lives would be save a year, every year.
A monster hurricane could really straighten out the weather in the Gulf of Mexico. And a tsunami could really clean up the beaches in New Jersey.
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Well, we DO work & study & spend a lot trying to reduce auto deaths. Without those efforts, we’d easily be up around 100k / yr, IMO.
Reducing abortion though... that needs even more work to get more people on board our train.
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