March Is Oregon Earthquake Awareness Month!

And tsunami awareness month... but theres not much you can do about those.

A brief reminder, we live smack in the middle of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The subduction event of the Juan de Fuca plate sliding under the North American Plate will trigger a giant tsunami and shake the ground with 8~9 Richter scale force. Thats a pretty serious earthquake, it will be similar to Japan's 2011 Tohoku quake.

Its is apropos to write this post today since my friend posted an article to Fbook this morning warning that based on recent seismic and volcanic activity the time could be soon for 'The Big One'.

The reality is that we have no way to predict when The Big One will hit. It will strike without warning.
What we do know is that the Juan De Fuca plate subducts about every 300 years, the last one was on January 26, 1700... 314 years ago. Scientists estimate that within the next 50 years the risk of a Megathrust Earthquake in Cascadia is between 10% and 40%. I say that based on a certainty of subduction within the next hundred years, the odds of The Big One occurring in any given month are ~1 in 1,500.

For reference: the odds of me winning the Mega Millions jackpot tonight are 1 in 258,890,850
The odds of the quake happening between now (4pm) and the drawing at 8:  1 in       219,145  

So now that you're aware,
what can you do to prepare?

[Dear Reader: I hate to pull the "find out at 11...", but alas I have run out of time before work. I promise to deliver solid measures in the next post. Until then, pray that neither of those extremely unlikely events occur tonight, they would both be hell, and I'm only prepared for one of them]