The most dangerous fault line no one thinks about is the Cascadia subduction zone, a 700-mile stretch of the Pacific Northwest between Cape Mendocino, California, and Vancouver Island. The odds of at least an 8.0 earthquake (and tsunami) striking Portland, Seattle, and much of the northwestern US in the next 50 years are one in three. The odds of an even bigger earthquake and tsunami—on the order of what hit Japan in 2011—in the same timespan are one in ten, producing a scenario in which "everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast," in the words of one FEMA official. The last big one to hit the region happened in 1700; judging from the average interval between quakes, we were due for another in 1943. [The New Yorker]
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