An Earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when. The next full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent. Read the full story in The New Yorker
Just north of the San Andreas, however, lies another fault line. Known as the Cascadia subduction zone, it runs for seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, beginning near Cape Mendocino, California, continuing along Oregon and Washington, and terminating around Vancouver Island, Canada. The “Cascadia” part of its name comes from the Cascade Range, a chain of volcanic mountains that follow the same course a hundred or so miles inland.
