My Wet Coast Life

I woke up this morning to find out another large earthquake has struck somewhere on terra firma. The unlucky recipients today are the citizens of Turkey. A strong 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Eastern Turkey Monday morning. So you are probably thinking what's the big deal? Earthquakes happen all the time and as long as it is not in my back yards, i will be sublime about it. Now are you sure about that?

Living on the wet coast, we live in the Pacific Ring of Fire. It is a 40,000km horseshoe ringed shape area, in the basin of a Pacific Ocean, where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

We experience earthquakes all the time in this area, but most tend to be small enough that they are rarely felt. But since 2010 began, at least in my opinion, I have noticed we have been seeing much larger quakes and more frequent and most of them were around the Ring of Fire. All you need to do is check out the U.S. Geological Survey's website showing worldwide earthquakes with magnitude of 4.5+ in the last 7 days to see there have been a few...

Follow up:

Now let's jump back to the beginning of 2010. Most people were still working off there hangovers when the Solomon islands, on January 3rd, was struck by a 7.2 magnitude quake and resulting in a 10 foot tsunami and then aftershocks of over 5 for the next week or so.

6 days later, a 6.5 magnitude quake off the coast of Eureka, California struck. Luckily, only minor structural damage occurred.

Just over 2 days later, on January 12th, Haiti is struck by a massive 7.0 magnitude quake killing hundreds of thousands and leaving millions homeless. The world is awestruck by the devastation and rushes aid in to help the Haitians.

2 days later, Venezuela has an earthquake measuring 5.6 magnitude earthquake but only minor damage is reported. Starting to see a pattern yet?

Now jump 1.5 months later and Japan narrowly avoids a 7.0 magnitude quake south of Ryukyu Islands on February 26. Luckily there was no reported damage and only a 10cm wave due to the epicenter of the quake. Japan knows all about massive quakes when Kobe was hit in 1995.

Not even 24 hours later, Chile experiences a devastating 8.8 magnitude quake. It sends out a Pacific wide tsunami alert. To give you an idea of how massive this was, Seismologists estimate that the earthquake was so powerful that it may have shortened the length of the day by 1.26 microseconds and moved the Earth's figure axis by 8 cm or 2.7 milliarcseconds....ummm...wow is all i can say...

Now let's take a break from this devastation and look at how this is measured. It is based on the Moment magnitude scale which measure the size of earthquakes in terms of the energy released. As the magnitude goes up, it becomes a multiple increase in regards to the strength.

Chile's magnitude-8.8 earthquake of February 2010 released roughly 500 times more energy than Haiti's magnitude-7.0 earthquake the month before

Now let's get back to the quakes, not even 12 hours after the Chile quake, a 6.3 magnitude quake in Salta, Argentina but luckily caused little damage and loss of life. Starting to see something yet based on this? Well, lets continue then...

On March 4th, 5 days later, while the world is focused on relief to Chile, Taiwan is hit by a 6.7 magnitude quake. Its epicenter was located in the mountainous area of Kaohsiung County of the southwestern Taiwan and luckily few deaths and injuries occurred but it could have been much worse. Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan with 1.5 million inhabitants is located near the epicenter.
One day later, Sumatra is hit by a 6.5 quake too. And then we come to today, 3 days later, with Turkey experiencing a 5.9 quake and reports of death and damage still coming in.

Now if you want to see recent earthquakes, Environment Canada's site and the U.S. Geological Survey site has near real time lists of recent earthquakes. Now the scary map to see is the IRIS map. If you notice in the image below, the only area left without large yellow circles is the Pacific Northwest. hmmm....This is why i think we are next. We are the only area left unscathed by recent large earthquake activity.

Now what this tells me mother nature isn't quite done with the shaking and based on the tectonic plates around us, when the pressure is relived elsewhere in the world, i can only assume pressure else where is building up near us. We experienced a large quake close to us in 2001 for the Nisqually quake which came in at 6.8 magnitude and the largest for Washington state. This was a wake up call for citizens of the Pacific Northwest.

So what does this all mean? For years they have been warning us of the next "big one" for the Pacific Northwest. And in my opinion, based on what else has occurred in the last 3 months and the fact we are the only are in the Ring of Fire left unscathed from a major quake, i can only guess we are next and most likely soon. We have been having smaller tremors recently and those could go either way. They could be relieving the pressure and postponing our "big one" or they could be the heads up we are building up to be next...and have our "big one".

Now having done search and rescue when i was in my teens and having an interest in geology, earthquakes have always fascinated me. In search and rescue and living in an earthquake zone, we've learned and heard about it to be prepared since we were kids. We all know it will happen and when is the big question. We have the Juan de Fuca plate off our coast slowly sub-ducting under the North American plate (this is how we got our beautiful Rockies). Sooner or later, the pressure will become great enough that it will "pop" our big one on us. We cannot stop this. We cannot prevent this from occurring. The only thing we can do is to be PREPARED.

I personally recommend everyone has a 7 day emergency kit (or greater if you can afford the cost and space). They recommend a 72 hour kit at a bare minimum but if you look at any recent disaster, you'll need more than 72 hours. Look at the geography of the lower mainland and we have bridges and rivers to deal with and i bet some, if not all of the bridges will get damaged and impassable depending on the severity of the quake. This means millions will be stuck with logistical issues trying to get supplies to those areas. Are you willing to risk your life, family and friend's lives for being ill-prepared? Doesn't cost much to make a kit and that kit could mean the difference between life and death, you never know until it happens. If you want more information on preparedness, you can visit the Provincial Emergency Programs website or contact your local municipality to see what planning and preventative measures they have in place.

Hopefully this article was enough to drop kick you in the back of the head and realize the threat is there and to get prepared. Hopefully i am wrong thinking we are next and it will be soon. But if i am right??....
The difference will be are you prepared or expecting someone else to do the preparing for you? Emergency personal will have enough to deal with and the more you're prepared, the less they will need to focus helping you and they can dedicate the limited resources to a greater benefit.

You can hope for the best. But plan and expect the worst.