If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you should prepare for a large earthquake.
I say this not because I know we will get a large earthquake in the near future, although that’s a notable possibility. Even a probability.
My main reason for saying this is that preparing for an earthquake covers all sorts of disruptive events that are seeming more likely and more imminent.
Consider the likely aftermath of a Cascadia Megaquake, concluded in the 2013 Oregon Resilience Plan:
These are not minor implications. Imagine being 1 to 12 months without clean and available drinking water, and 1 to 3 months without reliable electricity. Something like this will happen. It’s just a matter of time.
But back to my original point. Other disastrous events seem more likely than they used to be. I’ll name a few.
Natural disasters such as wildfires.
Civil unrest. Our nation is becoming more divided than ever, at least in modern history. And the last few years have not helped.
Economic collapse of some sort. The United States and other nations have been on an unsustainable spending spree for decades, but especially the last 15 years or so. The last few years have not helped on this front, either. It’s not going to end well.
I could go on. Global tensions are higher. Russia and Ukraine are currently at war. We are not guaranteed peace in North America.
I do not believe in spreading irrational fear (and I’m not). I suspect you feel it, too. I want to help save lives and help us to prosper as we move into an uncertain future.
Chris Goldfinger went on record with a calculation that there is about a 1 in 3 chance of a Magnitude 8 or higher earthquake off the coast of Oregon in the next 50 years (See “The Really Big One” New Yorker article).
Let us assume that estimate of probability is accurate. Consider what kind of odds we have of any significant disruptive event in the next 50 years- say, a regional, national, or global event, but one that affects us in our location. They’re high… very high.
Many other disruptive events could have similar effects on life and infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest as a large earthquake.
I’ll throw something else out here for consideration. I noticed after the December 2022 M6.4 Ferndale earthquake in northern California, Temblor (an earthquake risk assessment and catastrophe modeling company based in the Bay Area) had this to say: “The (Ferndale) quake produced severe shaking in a lightly populated area, (and) brought the southern tip of the Cascadia Subduction Zone slightly closer to failure…”
Tectonic action is often happening beneath us and off the coast that remind us that the Cascadia Subduction Zone is indeed active, and a large earthquake is looming. The Ferndale earthquake was a recent reminder.
Priorities?
There are many good personal and family goals worthy to be pursued, so earthquake preparedness does not always seem like it needs to be an urgent priority. In addition, our exceedingly distracting world does not help us achieve goals, in general.
Please consider putting earthquake preparedness at or near the top of your list. Or, if you don’t live in earthquake country, preparedness for a particular event that aligns with your region. I would argue that some things we are often encouraged to prioritize should go below earthquake preparedness.
The point of this post is not to get into preparedness details, but think of food, water, sanitation, personal fitness, etc. It’s a time-consuming endeavor and probably needs to be thought of more as a lifestyle change than a checklist of things to get done. A perk about preparedness is that it can overlap with activities that we tend to value in the Pacific Northwest: camping, biking, gardening, hunting, etc.
For information about seismic assessments or retrofitting of a home or building, please see the Cascadia Risk Solutions website.
Whether or not the big earthquake happens in the near future, now is the time to prepare for it.