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From that article: > fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. From the rest of the article, it seem
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
From that article:
> fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami.
From the rest of the article, it seems that this estimate of deaths is too low by an order of magnitude. More people died in the Fukushima earthquake, and that is in a country that is probably the most earthquake ready country in the world.
If you only have 15 minutes from the start of the earthquake to when the tsunami rolls in, given the density and the lack of preparation, I could easily see several 100 thousand people perishing if not a million.
- divbzero 6y agoI don’t know about how this would impact the estimates, but the Pacific Northwest differs from Japan in that the largest population centers — Vancouver, Seattle, Portland — are not exposed to the open ocean.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ahelwer 6y agoSeattle also rises very quickly from the ocean. Take a look: https://en-us.topographic-map.com/maps/na3/Seattle/ https://en-us.topographic-map.com/maps/na3/Seattle/ With the exception of the international district, all the low-lying areas are industrial in nature.
- jvolkman 6y ago"Drumlin" is the fun word for this geology, from what I understand. https://youtu.be/oSSxdogrv1s?t=189 https://youtu.be/oSSxdogrv1s?t=189
- markkanof 6y agoRight, in Oregon the coastal areas mostly rise quite quickly from the beach and are relatively sparsely populated. The more populated areas of Portland, Salem, Eugene, etc are well away from the ocean, so a tsunami is unlikely to kill very many people here.
- tomtheelder 6y agoThe population isn't really coastal. There will be a lot of casualties along the coast, but it is sparsely populated. The overall number should be much lower than the Tohoku quake. Some other estimates have the number considerably lower than FEMA's.
- akiselev 6y agoThat figure comes with a caveat that's mentioned towards the end of the article: > As for casualties: the figures I cited earlier—twenty-seven thousand injured, almost thirteen thousand dead—are based on the agency’s official planning scenario, which has the earthquake striking at 9:41 A.M. on February 6th. If, instead, it strikes in the summer, when the beaches are full, those numbers could be off by a horrifying margin. Thirteen thousand sounds like a best case scenario. If it happens 4th of July weekend when a million people are on the beaches all up and down the west coast, that could cause orders of magnitude more fatalities.
- mxcrossb 6y agoIf this is the case, it seems like you could get a lot of bang for your buck by building up a beach evacuation infrastructure.
- bobthepanda 6y agoAll you really need to do is get inland, and usually not very far. In this sample evacuation map for Ocean City WA, the higher ground is within half a mile of a good chunk of the coast, and nearly all of the coast is a mile from higher ground. https://www.dnr.wa.gov/Publications/ger_tsunami_evac_oceancity.pdf https://www.dnr.wa.gov/Publications/ger_tsunami_evac_oceanci...
- noahtallen 6y agoAll along the Oregon coast are signs indicating where the tsunami impact zone is, and I think there are also alarms in a lot of towns too.
- xyhopguy 6y agothere is never a million people on the oregon coast.
- Retric 6y agoThe problem is if the entire west coast adds up to 1 million people at the beach it might make very little difference which state their in. A 7pm July 4th quake resulting in a massive Tsunami would be vastly more deadly than an identical 4am quake the next day.