El Hierro

[jand]

Update 19/02 – 16:04 UTC
 - Tremor remains very low, with 3 more earthquakes since last update, making a total of 6 earthquakes since midnight.
 Date                 Time  Depth Magn  Epicenter
 19/02/2012    15:09    10        1.1    W EL PINAR
 19/02/2012    15:15    11        1.5    SW FRONTERA
 19/02/2012    15:16    9         0.8    SW EL PINAR

Update 19/02 – 13:43 UTC
 - 3 earthquakes since midnight

[jand]

Avcan FB Copied.

Spectrogram of MACI processed by AVCAN with the data from the IRIS network with a sampling of 4000Hz frequency, where the two seismos produced yesterday in Tenerife, the first of these 3.3, to the right of the graph can be seen

[jand]

Avcan FB Copied

The seismicity of today is in the Gulf with a 1.7 and in the area of the sea of the las Calmas. Yesterday the seismic activity was concentrated in one strip n-S from Gulf marine zone, land of the Gulf area, the area of summits, the Julan and marine in the calm sea zone, while the antesdeayer was also in the Gulf and its marine zone. The 16 day was by all these areas and also the area of dorsal South la Restinga, and North towards NNW - SSW there are 4 earthquakes aligned according to the extension of the dorsal said. Point out that daily seismic activity is not concentrated, it is very distributed throughout the area of seismic activity from the Gulf to the calm sea and even in Earth (Henry).
9 hours ago · Like · 13

[jand]

OT but it seems that harmonic tremors are starting both in Iceland and Etna.



irpsit says:

 February 20, 2012 at 07:16


And the, what seems as tremor, still continues in stations in south Iceland, probably linked to Katla

Reply



henrilerevenant says:

 February 20, 2012 at 07:26


Tremor is still rising at Etna, slowly but steadily. Not only station EBELZ but also the wonky and erratic ECPNZ shows it.

"Tremore vulcanico" – http://www.ct.ingv.it/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=201&lang=en
 (webcams including thermal views are found in the menu at left)
 The best views of the summit and the New South East Crater – http://www.guide-etna.com/webcam/

Reply

[jand]

There have been eight earthquakes already since midnight El Hierro.


Six earthquakes already since midnight.

1127572 20/02/2012 00:26:24 27.6266 -18.0332 11 1.2 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI

1127573 20/02/2012 01:27:00 27.6235 -18.0896 9 1.1 4 SW EL PINAR.IH

1127574 20/02/2012 01:29:07 27.7274 -18.0372 11 1.1 4 SW FRONTERA.IHI

1127575 20/02/2012 01:45:56 27.7119 -18.0500 13 1.0 4 SW FRONTERA.IHI

1127588 20/02/2012 03:13:46 27.7167 -18.0426 12 1.6 4 SW FRONTERA.IHI

1127589 20/02/2012 03:21:46 27.6409 -18.0901 10 1.1 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI

Reply

2012/02/20 04:02 27.6727 -18.0794 depth 19.00 mag 1.10 SW EL PINAR.IHI
 2012/02/20 04:46 27.7201 -18.0718 depth 13.20 mag 1.10 SW FRONTERA.IHI

[jand]

It is being discussed on Avcan FB that the tides do actually influence the earthquakes.

Volcanic Canary Islands (AVCAN) right now is that this is scientifically proven to some volcanoes... I leave more or less fixed google translation of the article (Henry):


"The influence of the tides of the Earth each fortnight in the volcano Kilauea, Hawaii"


Daniel Dzurisin


Geological service of the United States.UU., Hawaii Volcano Observatory, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii 96718


"The premise that two weeks of Earth tides play an important role in the onset of the activity in the volcano Kilauea, in Hawaii confirmed after analysis of 52 historical eruptions." January 1832, nearly double the eruptions have occurred since many closer to the tidal maximum fifteen days than the minimum of the tides (34 vs 18). A direct significance test indicates that the probability of a fortnightly tidal influence on Kilauea eruptions is 90%. This is not the case of volcano Mauna Loa, where 37 historical eruptions have been distributed randomly on the fortnightly tide. Kîlauea, tensions induced by the tides of the Earth every two weeks, presumably act in concert with the volcanic and tectonic efforts to trigger surface movements of magma in pre-existing weakness areas. The differences in the structure or the internal pipe can limit the effectiveness of this mechanism on Mauna Loa. Effects of the tide seems to be less marked in the shields that some volcanoes arc of Islands, possibly due to higher average rates of stress volcanic in Hawaii more often override the effects of tidal forces. "


Original source:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/CrossRef/1980/GL007i011p00925.shtml


https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/430858_10150598048591985_560801984_9345721_580504201_n.jpg

[jand]

http://www.avcan.org/mapas/AVCAN2775.jpg?d=1329766836

Today we have already been 18 earthquakes... and the truth is that they are starting to align in NE-SW direction from border towards the Julán... but also there are other two axes more one NNE-SSW and other NNW-SSE that passes through the eruptive zone. Even in the border area there is another alignment NW-SE... will that today is a far less curious activity... (Henry).


EARTHQUAKES DAY 20 FEB. -Dark blue (18)
EARTHQUAKES DAY 19 FEB. -Pink (

[jand]

And we continue in this third phase of activity which we started on January 25 of this year yque looks very good in the vertical representation of the earthquakes, which are concentrated in a strip, which by the way tends to be more shallow as time goes on, to less depth... (Henry)


http://www.avcan.org/sismica/graficas/G831.jpg?t=1329766919

[jand]

the evolution of the energy curve seismic accumulated released shows us more of the same, we continue releasing energy at one rate more or less constant or continue in this third phase with the system active or "live" to see where leads this, that no one really knows... see what happens, as the only thing you can do is monitor to see what their next move... (Henry)

http://www.avcan.org/sismica/graficas/G830.jpg?t=1329766719

[jand]

People on Avcan FB have commented they are feeling movements again on the Island.

hay temblorcitos leves, desde hace 3 o 4 días, muchos, durante todo el día, cortos, muy suaves... por momentos vuelve la sensación de 'barquito'. En Los Mocanes, Frontera

and there is mild temblorcitos, for 3 or 4 days, many throughout the day, short, very soft... at times becomes the sensation of 'boat'. In the Mocanes, border (Translated by Bing)

Enrique, buenas noches. La verdad es que hoy ha sido un dia de ruidos extraños como si estuvieran pasando bajo la casa camiones pesados, o algo parecido.

Henry, good evening. The truth is that today has been a day of strange noises as if they were passing under the House heavy trucks, or something similar. (Translated by Bing

[jand]

volcanocafe copied.

Carl le Strange says:

 February 21, 2012 at 10:57


Here is something to ruminate upon regarding The Canaries that really is a mystery...

La Palma has two GPSs
 The northern one is nice and steady, almost boring, like almost all of the other GPSs in the Canaries.
 http://www.02.ign.es/ign/resources/volcanologia/jpg/ELHIERRO_GPS_FRON-LPAL.jpg

If we then go to the other we should know that it had a steady negative motion... and then it went dead. Now it is online, and it seems like the negative motion has just continued in one smooth line while it was down. And the negative motion has summed up quite a lot. Then they took it offline permanently in November.
 But the hairy thing is, it moved 45 millimeters in 5 months. Direction is unknown. In one year that would mean a motion of 110 millimeters. And that is a horkload of a lot.
 I hate to use these words but... Landslide on the way?
 http://www.02.ign.es/ign/resources/volcanologia/jpg/ELHIERRO_GPS_FRON-MAZO.jpg

[jand]

Note 456 AVCAN – earthquake activity – VOLCANIC – island of HIERRO – 21 February 2012-11: 30 pm peninsular – earthquake and volcanic activity is continuing moderate Seismicity in the calm sea and the Centre of the island, including the Gulf, the Julan and the area of summits. Continuous played quite microsismicidad detected but not located in the spectrogram. 03: 52 Reflected a long period or LP event very clear in the station CHIE and EGOM related phenomena depressurization of magma at depth. Continues the signal of volcanic tremor in the eruptive area of la Restinga, and has stopped down and stays low without stopping and not at the lowest level which was a few days ago, in fact it seems that it begins to increase again. New 15 earthquakes. Magnitude between 0.4 and 2.0. Depths between 8.3 and 15.1km (two to 17.0 and 17.9 km). Yesterday 8. Yesterday 19. Today go 6. In total van 12345 earthquakes located in El Hierro by IGN from 9: 00 a.m. of the day 19 July 2011 (Henry).

http://www.avcan.org/Mapas/AVCAN2778.jpg?d=1329819138

Reply

[jand]

Note 456 AVCAN - earthquake activity - VOLCANIC - island of HIERRO - 21 February 2012-11: 30 pm peninsular - earthquake and volcanic activity is continuing moderate Seismicity in the calm sea and the Centre of the island, including the Gulf, the Julan and the area of summits. Continuous played quite microsismicidad detected but not located in the spectrogram. 03: 52 Reflected a long period or LP event very clear in the station CHIE and EGOM related phenomena depressurization of magma at depth. Continues the signal of volcanic tremor in the eruptive area of la Restinga, and has stopped down and stays low without stopping and not at the lowest level which was a few days ago, in fact it seems that it begins to increase again. New 15 earthquakes. Magnitude between 0.4 and 2.0. Depths between 8.3 and 15.1km (two to 17.0 and 17.9 km). Yesterday 8. Yesterday 19. Today go 6. In total van 12345 earthquakes located in El Hierro by IGN from 9: 00 a.m. of the day 19 July 2011 (Henry).

[jand]

Avcan FB Comment

Anyway, I have to point out that the Moon influences in volcanoes, but not as the final variable, but there is more variable and so not always is the triggering factor, we must think that things are not black and white also are grey and like people, some Yes and others not...


for example this commented this article of the National Gerográphic in this regard, which I leave for more or less fixed google translate... is quite interesting reading which come to a conclusion... the Moon is another factor that influences the eruptions of some volcanoes. (Henry)


"There are linked to the lunar cycle volcanic eruptions?"


Brian Handwerk
For National Geographic News

February 15, 2002

The horrors unleashed by the recent eruption of the Mount of the Congo-Nyiragongo have once again demonstrated our difficult relationship with the fires that rabidly move below the surface of the Earth.

In January, the tons of molten rock of the Nyiragongo entered the town of Goma, with the demolition of many of its neighborhoods and killing dozens of people. It was a hard reminder that, despite of the volcanoes have been sweeping areas populated throughout history, it still lacks the ability to accurately predict the deadly eruptions and save lives.

If the prediction of eruptions is a confusing puzzle, Steve and Donna O volcanoes hunters ' O'Meara believe that it may have identified a key piece. The husband and wife team are investigating a connection pointed out some observers of the volcano from the earliest times, but none has been studied adequately, the role of the Moon affects the volcanic activity.


The interest of the O'Meara in this theory lunar began by chance in 1996, while the duo was studying a volcano erupted in the field. Steve is an astronomer by profession, and was their experience in this field apparently unrelated that led him to a fateful discovery.

During the compilation of detailed publications of his scientific observations, he began to notice a correlation between the increase in volcanic activity and the lunar cycles. Reviewing through piles of data he had collected over twenty years in the field, Steve reviewed the past eruptions and saw some of the same patterns. Additional research suggests that a lunar pattern was also apparent in some famous historical eruptions, such as Krakatoa in 1883.

Other long-term observers of history had taken note of the possibility of such connection, but always as a note at the bottom, and provided that looking back on the eruptions that had already taken place. Nobody had given the complete field study, and no one had tried to use these patterns of dots as one of the tools to predict future volcanic eruptions.

Stromboli, a volcanic access point

With the support of the National Geographic Society, the husband and wife team set out to prove that same possibility in one of the volcanic hot spots of the Earth, the Summit of Stromboli Italy Aeolian Islands.

Stromboli is one of the most active volcanoes on the planet. The mountain has been tireless in a State of almost continuous eruption for at least 2,000 years. In spite of large eruptions and lava flows are rare, smaller eruptions are very frequent and often launch droplets of lava on the rim of the crater.

Earrings of Stromboli, which can be inhospitable. Visitors have to contend with the toxic gases, noxious fumes, and the shower of hot ash. While at the site of the team (consisting of Steve, Donna, and several research assistants # also suffered exceptionally brutal weather conditions in their field of the mountain top.) However, driven by their enthusiasm, they took to making observations of 24 hours a day, working in shifts of six hours. Despite the skepticism of some volcanologists, the Group was determined to put the lunar theory of proof.

Despite living in Stromboli conditions left much to be desired, the climate was ideal for research because of continuously active eruptions and the occurrence of several lunar events. The moon came into some important phases during the time of the team in Stromboli. Over a period of 14 days of observations of the Moon reached the perigee # point in that its orbit is closer to the Earth) and also experienced a phase of full moon. The full moon is a point in which the Moon exerts a particularly large on Earth influence, as evidenced by high tides.

The objective of the team was to determine if the highest peaks in activity of eruption occurred, and what is the relationship to the increased activity might have with the gr attraction

[jand]

Avcan FB Comment by Avcan

At the risk of being wrong, in the absence of more data than the comparison of the time of arrival of the wave to the seismographs of the other islands and the USGS data, this morning, have had what we understand as a new long period, typical event in stratovolcanoes and comienzarían to present at the El Hierro system, isolated nowThe eruptive tremor and form apparent. An LP or long period event, is a harmonic movement; i.e., the resonance in a musical note and their harmonics, low frequency which are not audible, but produced in volcanic conduits for magma fluids. These conduits, act as an organ pipes. In the seismogram, they are characterized by a slow weakening of the signal that produces, generating waves of various types. Attached a summary of the types of most characteristic form of LPs that can "play" to classify it and find out if it is indeed a LP (JR).

http://www.geo.uni-jena.de/geophysik/inhalt/volcanology/tremor.pdf

http://www.02.ign.es/ign/head/volcaSenalesDiasAnterioresHora.do?nombreFichero=CHIE_2012-02-22_01-02&estacion=CHIE&Anio=2012&Mes=02&Dia=22&tipo=1&hora=01-02

http://www.02.ign.es/ign/head/volcaSenalesDiasAnterioresHora.do?nombreFichero=CHIE_2012-02-22_01-02&estacion=CHIE&Anio=2012&Mes=02&Dia=22&tipo=2&hora=01-02

[jand]

schteve says:

 February 22, 2012 at 08:25


1127962 22/02/2012 07:55:35 27.6593 -18.0581 10 2.6 mbLg SW EL PINAR.IHI

Morning All,
 This the biggest in a while....

Reply


There have been 2 more earthquakes before this one the 1.6 was only at 6km deep.

1127964 22/02/2012 07:00:29 27.7123 -18.0440 6 1.6 4 W EL PINAR.IHI

1127965 22/02/2012 07:12:52 27.6725 -18.0637 11 1.4 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI

1127962 22/02/2012 07:55:35 27.6593 -18.0581 10 2.6 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI

[jand]

Avcan FB Comment

Earthquake of 2.6 in the calm sea 10 km to start the day that has been able to be felt by herreña population. That thing you have sense, remember to fill in the questionnaire of the IGN, is very important...

1127962 02 22, 2012 07: 55: 35 27.6593 – 18.0581 10 2.6 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI

[jand]

Avcan FB Copied

Today started with a 2.6 in the calm sea, and another very close to the NNW. The third has been more shallow in the area of peaks, with one brief yesterday in the same area. The rest of the activity is concentrated by the area of summits, the Julán and the mar de las Calmas, until almost the eruptive area. Lineups for all tastes and as earthquakes are arranged in a curious way, forming three arches, maybe one more.:

the first arc with Center in the eruptive area of la Restinga begins in the mar de las calmas at address N, to go turn Ne entering by the coast, Julán, passes the area of summits and goes to the town boundary where turns to address Jan

the second arc estáría centered more or less in the Centre of the island and goes from the eruptive area in NNW direction to turn the N to enter along the coast to the summits zone and begin to turn to the NNE in the Gulf to the West of the Tanganasoga

the third arc is not so clear, but would be focused on the Tanganasoga and empezaria border in direction, to go turn the S pass Ridge through the center of the island, turning SW, going out to the sea in cala Pinar in SW direction and turn direction w. (Henry)
4 hours ago · Like · 8

[jand]

Avcan FB Comment translated.

Judith says:

 February 22, 2012 at 15:08


https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002132433634

lo que aparece en el centro del mapa, una pequeña nube de puntos, es el tanganasoga? hay bastante concentración en esa zona... Por lo que he leido por aquí, ese volcán es peligroso, pero ¿qué peligrosidad puede tener ahora? quiero decir, los volcanes no siempre tienen el mismo comportamiento a lo largo de la historia, ¿no? creo haber oido que en estratovolcanes pueden darse erupciones de varios tipos com efusivas o estrombolianas o con más o menos agua y por lo tanto mas o menos explosivas... ¿qué se puede esperar si sale algo por ahí? que esperemos que no por supuesto, porque está el jorobao en muy mal sitio...

what appears in the center of the map, a small cloud of points, is the tanganasoga? There are enough concentration in the area... From what I've read here, this volcano is dangerous, but what danger can have now? I mean, the volcanoes do not always have the same behavior throughout history, right? I have heard that in stratovolcanoes may occur eruptions of several effusive com types or Strombolian or with more or less water and therefore more or less explosive... what you can expect if you get something out there? that hope which does not of course, because the jorobao is very bad site... (Translated by Bing)

[jand]

http://www.ieo.es/images/hierro-VistasElHierro-Febrero2012.jpg

"The team of geology and Marine Geophysics of the IEO of Madrid, aboard the research vessel Ramon Margalef, has made these views in 3D from the bathymetric data obtained in the campaign Bimbache-1011-9 during the 7 and 8 February 2012." "The presence of the new cone secondary, 75 metres in height located on the flank can be seen in some of the views are of the main cone." (Translated by Bing)

[jand]

OT but may be interesting to some.



Journalist Thompson presents clear picture of coming disaster and urges greater preparedness

By JACQUELINE WINDH   The Vancouver Sun     August 4, 2011


 Journalist and documentary filmmaker Jerry Thompson has been chasing the story of the Cascadia subduction zone, which lies off North America's West Coast, and the possibility of a "megathrust" earthquake, for 30 years. In the introduction to Cascadia's Fault, he notes that "scientists, civil engineers, and emergency planners know with certainty that it's bound to happen here, but they're having a devil of a time getting anyone to pay attention. This book, I hope, will change that."

Cascadia's Fault was going to press just as the magnitude 9 Tohoku Earthquake rocked Japan this March, sending a series of tsunami waves to Cascadia's shores.

By the time those waves reached North America, much of their power had been sapped. Nevertheless, they caused damages estimated at over $50 million to coastal towns in California and Oregon, and killed one man. Although Canadian coastlines were spared any significant damages, local residents of towns such as Ucluelet, Tofino and Port Alberni reported strong currents and rapid sea-level fluctuations of a metre or more.

While this timing may seem bad luck for author Thompson, for it makes his detailed compendium and analysis of most of the planet's recent large quakes instantly out-of-date, it is also fortuitous. If Thompson's aim with this book was to draw attention to the risk of a large subduction-associated megaquake here in North America, the comparison of our situation with Japan's can only help that.

Geologically, the Japanese scenario is a mirror-image of our geological setting here: a sometimes-locked subduction zone, where the Pacific tectonic plate moves in fits and starts beneath the thicker continental plate. Socially, the Japanese scenario is analogous to our own as well — directly above those subducting plates are modern cities sprinkled with mammoth structures of concrete and metal: highrises, industrial facilities, and highway overpasses.

The Cascadia subduction zone is an active fault that is 1,300 kilometres in length, extending from Northern California to northern Vancouver Island. When it finally slips — which could be in 200 years or it could be tonight — the destruction will be analogous to what happened in Japan, devastating a region 200 kilometres wide along the entire length of the fault, including the cities of Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Portland and Sacramento.

Although it is a valuable compendium of information, as a text the book suffers somewhat in its structure. Part detective story, part memoir and part popular science, the narrative is crafted as a thriller. The detective story — investigating whether the Cascadia subduction zone has the potential to generate magnitude 9 megaquakes — takes up the bulk of the text. Chapters flit around in time, jumping from the 1980s to the 1960s to the 2000s: describing other megaquakes that have occurred around the planet and assembling evidence from various scientific studies.

But a thriller loses much of its punch when we already know the answer to the mystery (in the text, the revelation that Cascadia's fault is probably not harmless comes on page 204). And the memoir aspects of the story, chronicling the author's interest in the subject, and his travels and interviews over the decades, come so few and far between that the jump to the first person can be jarring.

But Thompson excels when he explains the science. His methodical chronicling tells how each piece of the puzzle was uncovered — from investigations of cedar forests killed by saltwiter flooding in Washington state, to GPS arrays that reveal the slow but steady compression of mountain ranges on Vancouver Island. Thompson presents the data that, together, provide a clear picture of the scale and magnitude of Cascadia's coming earthquake and tsunami.

Whereas most of the book is devoted to piecing together the geological evidence, its final quarter addresses emergency planning. And this is a call for us to examine, especially here in Canada, what we are doing to prepare for it.

While American states, particularly California and Oregon, have detailed disaster plans and public awareness programs, British Columbia lags behind. Canada has no National Guard, and most of our active army units are either stationed east of the Rockies or deployed overseas. Damage to infrastructure: roads and railways and bridges, along with the potential scale of this disaster — how many communities will be affected — will cause delays of days or even weeks for rescue crews trying to provide assistance.

Thompson does a fine job of assembling the information about this coming event, literally presenting it on a platter to anyone who will listen. But, as one of the scientists he quotes says, "What the emergency response people do with that — it's up to them."

Jacqueline Windh is an author and photographer who holds a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences. She is based on Vancouver Island.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

[jand]

Carlos says:

 February 22, 2012 at 15:47


I dont want to scaremonge you...
 But if the next reading is usefull for you or your next generations... It would be fine spend 10 minutes reading it...

"We get a massive earthquake every 300 to 500 years around here, and we're due. They're super bad. When it comes, it's a monster. A full-rip nine.'#8201;"

By "full-rip nine" Corcoran means a mag­ni­tude-9.0 earthquake, the kind of massive off­shore temblor that triggered the tsunami that killed 28,050 people in Japan on March 11, 2011. Geologists call them megaquakes. Geo­logists also call the Northwest coast of North America—from Vancouver Island down to Northern California—one of the like­­liest next victims.

"When that earthquake hits, it's going to shake for a long time," says Corcoran. "Three to five minutes or more. You're going to feel lucky to survive. Then guess what. You rode out the quake? Congratulations. Now you have 15 minutes to get above 50 feet of ele­vation. Fifteen minutes. You're elderly and not very mobile? Sorry. Your condition does not change the geologic facts. It's called a tsu­nami. The water's coming. It can't be stopped.
 The Pacific Northwest is at the very top of that list.

THE PROBLEM IS the Cascadia subduction zone, or CSZ. This is an enormous fault that parallels the West Coast for about 740 miles, from the Brooks Peninsula on Vancouver ­Island to Cape Mendocino in Northern California. It sits about 50 miles off the coast, ­marking the line where the North American plate meets the Juan de Fuca plate. The CSZ ends where the San Andreas Fault begins, about 100 miles north of San Francisco.

The San Andreas you're familiar with. It's a transform fault—one characterized by ­lateral movement—where the Pacific plate grinds north past the North American plate. The creeping section of the San Andreas, south of the Bay Area, sheds its built-up strain in frequent small earthquakes, like a forest that burns so often it never has the chance to stock­pile fuel. The northern and southern ends of the fault aren't moving, which leads geologists to believe they eventually will lurch, ­resulting in a quake as large as 8.1.

2. "Largest recorded" means, in essence, dating back to 1880, when modern seismograph technology began to record the vibrations from earthquakes.

The CSZ is a different beast. Up in the North­west, the plates don't merely grind past each other. The heavier Juan de Fuca plate dives under (subducts) the lighter North American plate at a rate of 1.6 inches per year. Hence, a subduction zone. Transform faults like the San Andreas are capable of throwing off major quakes—up to 8.1—but not mega­quakes. Rule of thumb: the longer the fault rupture, the bigger the quake. Only sub­duc­tion zones have the length necessary to generate the mammoth 9.0's.

The CSZ is especially deceptive because it's been inactive for all of recorded history.3 "Seismically quiet as Kansas," says ­Robert Yeats, the éminence grise of West Coast seis­­mology and the author of Living with Earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest: A Survivor's Guide. "Or so we thought."

Back in the 1970s and '80s, Yeats and ­others attributed the CSZ's quiescence to a kind of hyper-lubrication. The subduction zone must be so slippery, they thought, that the Juan de Fuca plate is sliding under the North American plate as if on a bed of axle grease.

Then in 1979, John Adams, a New ­Zealand geologist working in Canada, noticed some­thing funny. Going over data from the ­Nat­ional Geodetic Survey, America's surveying corps, Adams found that highways along the Washington and Oregon coast were gaining about one to two millimeters of ­elevation per year. His findings held all the ominous portent of a line from a Tommy Lee Jones disaster movie: Um, guys, why are all the roads rising?

Other evidence compounded the ­concern. In 1986, Brian Atwiter, a researcher at the USGS, was canoeing along the shore of Willapa Bay, north of the Oregon-­Washington state line, during a low tide. He noticed evidence of a "ghost forest," old ­cedar stumps half-buried in the tidal ­marshes. The stumps sparked a memory; at a talk by USGS geologist Tom Ovenshine years earlier, Atwiter had heard that spruce and willow thickets in Alaska's Cook ­Inlet had dropped five feet during the 1964 Good Friday quake. Could the same thing have happened here? Tree-ring tests by colleagues confirmed that the Willapa Bay forest died in 1700. So did other buried estuary stumps along Washington's southern coast. That date cor­res­ponded with historical ­accounts of a massive tsunami striking the ­islands of Japan in January 1700.

This startling evidence made seis­­­­mologists sit up and take notice. Clearly, the Cascadia subduction zone had ruptured in a megaquake in 1700, down-dropping the Northwest coast several feet in elevation and unleashing a killer tsunami.

As for the rising roads, well, think of it this way. Take a fishing rod and jam the tip up against a low garden wall. Now hold the rod at the butt and slowly push the tip into the wall. As tension builds, the rod will bow upward under the strain. That, in a nutshell, is what the North­west coast is doing.

3. Which, in the Pacific Northwest, isn't saying much. Indians have been here for 10,000 years, but written history arrived only in the early 19th century.

"The new evidence meant that the Juan de Fuca plate wasn't sliding easily ­under the North American plate," says Yeats. "It meant that the two plates were completely locked." Pressure has been building and building, for 311 years. If you are a geologist, at this point what runs through your mind is, Holy poo.

Of course, the magic number could be 500 years, or (gulp) 244. For the past decade, Chris Goldfinger has been pulling samples from land­slide zones off the Oregon coast.4 By interpreting the cross-sections, he found a record of 19 full-rip nines in the past 10,000 years—a rate of about one every 500 years. He also dis­covered 22 CSZ quakes measuring 8.0 to 8.5. That means the CSZ has caused 41 major quakes in the past 10,000 years, or one every 244 years.

So what we have now is a 740-mile ­section of the world's most seismically active zone, the Ring of Fire, that has been building up elastic strain for 311 years. The North American plate, by some estimates, is now springloaded to leap more than 57 feet west and drop three to six feet in elevation at the coast. The CSZ always ruptures in one of two ways: as a kielbasa (along its entire length) or as one of numerous breakfast-link sausages (a single 200-mile segment). A breakfast link would set off an 8.0, limiting damage to a portion of the coast. The whole kielbasa would be a 9.0-plus that rocks the entire Northwest coast.

"The amount of devastation is going to be unbelievable," Rob Witter, a geologist with the USGS's Alaska Science Center, told the Oregonian in 2009. "It may not happen in a person's lifetime, but if it does, it's going to be equivalent to a Katrina-like event."

Or, as Goldfinger puts it, "If it did happen, it can happen."

THIS IS HOW it will happen.

Let's pick a day: June 22, 2012. It's a gorgeous Friday afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, 75 degrees and sunny. It's been raining for weeks, and in Seattle the freeways are jammed with people fleeing the city to ­enjoy the rare sunshine. Same story in Portland. Out on the coast, the beach towns are thrumming with tourists. In Ocean Shores, Washington, teenagers race rental scooters up and down the town's six-mile-long peninsula. Merchants are happy. The motels are nearly full. Down in bustling Seaside, Oregon, 75 miles away, shopkeepers are doing a snappy trade in ­T-shirts, towels, flip-flops, and sunscreen. Eight miles south in tony Cannon Beach, rest­aurants are booking tables for 7 p.m.

4. During a subduction-zone earthquake, landslides occur on the ocean floor just as they do on dry land. Unlike dry-land slides, however, the most likely thing that can set off a seabed slide is an earthquake. So they make excellent markers of subduction-zone events.

Officials in each town are aware of the CSZ megaquake-and-tsunami risk. They've all printed up evacuation-route maps. In Cannon Beach, they've even talked about building a new city hall that would double as a tsu­­­nami safe house. But nobody has ever had the money to build anything, other than installing tsunami-warning sirens.

Not that there will be much warning. Even today, when it comes to earthquake prediction, the earth remains a poker ­player without a tell. "The best we can do is let people know how the shaking will spread once an earthquake starts," says University of Washington geologist John Vidale, director of the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Net­­­work. "Japan's system is the best in the world. Within 30 seconds of the start of the March 11 earthquake, they broadcast a warning that it would be at least a magnitude 8.0." No such system yet exists in the United States, though Vidale's and other teams are working on one.

"Let me tell you this," Patrick Corcoran says as we stroll down Broadway, Seaside's main drag. "There's a shop a couple blocks up the street that sells T-shirts that say TSUNAMI EVACUATION PLAN: (1) GRAB BEER. (2) RUN LIKE HELL."

"And honestly," he says, "that's not a bad strategy."

MINUTE 0:00
 After 312 years, the Cascadia subduction zone can no longer contain the strain. It ruptures at a spot 55 miles west of Cannon Beach and quickly spreads along 700 miles of its 740-mile length. The North American plate slips anywhere from 45 to 57 feet to the southwest, sliding over the Juan de Fuca plate. It doesn't happen instantly. A mass that large—remember, we're talking about crust more than 50 miles deep—takes time to move. But upon its first lunge, the CSZ sends out a pres­sure wave, or P-wave, that travels through the earth's crust at 13,000 miles per hour. It reaches the West Coast within ten seconds. That first P-wave, the earthquake's leading edge, hits Ocean Shores, Cannon Beach, and Seaside. Thirty seconds later it reaches Port­land; in 50 seconds, it hits Seattle. At the Uni­versity of Washington's Seis­mology Lab in Seattle, the seismometers jump. Geologists read the data and declare the earthquake a 9.1. It's the full rip.

The first few seconds feel like any other strong earthquake: jarring. "The pressure wave is like a jackhammer, rat-tat-tat-tat-tat," explains Goldfinger, who happened to be outside Tokyo—at a geology conference to discuss the Sumatra earthquake—during the March 11 Sendai quake.

The sound is majestic and awesome. In his book A Dangerous Place, author Marc Reisner wrote of his experience in San Francisco during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake: "What I remember most vividly is the grinding, the unearthly noise of great surfaces and structures grating together." Chris Goldfinger recalled the sound of leaves rattling on trees. In Japanese houses, the sound was an unrelenting clatter of metal and glass.

In the offices, apartments, and high-rise condos of Seattle and Portland, uncertainty creeps into half a million heads: Freeze or flee? In videos shot during the Japanese mega­quake, the overwhelming emotion on display isn't panic or raw fear. It's focused anxiety and strategic calculation. They are trying to figure out what to do.

"People in buildings die in an earthquake one of two ways," Corcoran says. "Either the building pancakes on top of them, or they run outside and a gargoyle falls off and hits them on the head. You need to know: Is your building a pancake or a gargoyle?"

Instinct and old memories kick in. Many people duck and cover under a strong table. (Actually not the worst plan.) Others recall their mothers telling them to jump into the bathtub. (Wrong natural disaster! The bathtub's for tornadoes.) Out on the roads, traffic slows to a halt, like a scene in one of those movies where invading aliens power down the planet.5 Some drivers get out and crouch next to their cars. Others stand and spectate. By and large, people remain calm.

Except, that is, on Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct. The elevated double-decker express­­way running along Elliott Bay begins to rock with the first P-wave. For more than two ­dec­ades, seismic engineers have warned that the Viaduct, built in the 1950s, will collapse in a major quake.6 Work on a $3.1 billion tunnel to replace it started in 2008, but the project has been delayed by political wrangling and soil problems. Now the Viaduct turns into a two-story demolition derby as people make desperate bids to reach the nearest off-ramp before the thing buckles. In the coming minutes, some sections will pancake, while ­others will topple completely. Drivers will be crushed ­beneath tons of concrete.

Two hundred miles south, in the ­trinket shops of Seaside, merchandise hops off the shelves. At the Purple Pelican, glass ­seahorses, swans, and custom-painted wine­glasses crash to the floor. Half-drained beer pints dance off the bar at Pudgy's Broiler. On the Seaside Carousel, fathers pull their daughters off painted horses and leap from the turn­table. Everybody knows it's an earthquake. Nobody knows yet that it's the big one.

Meanwhile, 50 miles offshore, the ­movement of the North American plate displaces a massive volume of seawater. A standing wave just a few feet tall appears at the surface, then splits in two. One half heads west toward ­Japan at a speed approaching 450 miles an hour. It will reach Honshu, the main island, in ten hours. The other half heads east. It will hit the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island in 20 minutes.

MINUTE 1:00
 After the earthquake's initial pressure wave, there's a short lull. Then the S-waves arrive. These shear waves travel more slowly than the pres­sure wave, but they're longer-lasting. A shear wave is like the wave that runs down a garden hose when you whip it. "It's the S-waves that ­really do the damage," says Gold­finger. "It feels like you're on a boat. Every­thing turns fluid." People start feeling dizzy. Some drop and hug the ground.

The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network flashes an earthquake alert to first responders, government officials, and media outlets. The network's instruments indicate that this is a full subduction-zone event, not a short fault rupture. "Expect shaking to continue for up to five minutes," the alert says. "Heavy after­shocks will follow."

5. A study of Japanese drivers during a 2003 earthquake found that 90 percent had slowed to a stop within about ten seconds of the start of the earthquake.
 6. The Viaduct is a near carbon copy of the Bay Area's infamous Cypress Structure, a one-mile stretch of the Nimitz Freeway that pancaked during the Loma Prieta earthquake, killing 42 motorists.

In Seattle and Portland, the strong shaking begins to induce liquefaction,7 a process in which the sandy soil that portions of both cities are built on turns into a thick, slurry-like liquid. Parts of Portland rest atop sediment laid down by the Willamette River, and Seattle's water­front sits on tidal flats overtopped by loose fill. In a quake, this unconsolidated fill loses its ability to support heavy structures. Wide cracks open in the streets. Sections of Seattle's waterfront collapse. Liquefied soil pushes against the city's retaining seawall, which has been weakened by gribbles.8

On the Oregon and Washington coasts, the S-waves turn the landscape into a rolling sea. Tourists struggle to stay on their feet. Older buildings shift off their foundations. In Seaside, the 1924 bridge that carries Broadway across the Necanicum River can't handle this dance. It twists, buckles, and collapses.

MINUTE 2:00
 People start checking their watches. Nobody can believe an earthquake could keep going this long. For that they can blame the unique features of the CSZ.

"Because there's so much sediment on it, the CSZ is very smooth," says Goldfinger. "Once it gets going, there are no ­irreg­ularities on its surface to stop it. If there's no reason for it to stop, it'll just keep going until it dissipates all 300-odd years of elastic strain."

Japan's March 11 quake lasted more than five minutes. That's longer than it takes a pot of coffee to brew. And that's not good.

"Most modern buildings weren't designed to withstand three to four minutes of shaking," says Peter Yanev. One of the leading seismic-engineering con­sul­tants, Yanev has investigated more than a 100 quakes around the world. "Almost none of the buildings in Seattle were designed for a megaquake."

Most unreinforced-masonry buildings9 in Portland and Seattle can survive a 45-­second quake, like the magnitude-6.8 Nisqually quake that hit Seattle in 2001. But the longer they're shaken, the weaker the structures be­come. "The difference between 40 seconds and four minutes is like the difference between a head-on collision at four miles an hour versus 40," says Yanev.

7. About liquefaction: Sandy soils are held together by friction. But when you add water (the ground under Seattle and Portland is typically saturated at the end of a rainy Pacific Northwest spring) and shake, the bonds of friction break. The most famous example occurred during the Loma Prieta quake, when the ground beneath San Francisco's Marina District turned to slop.
 8. That's right, gribbles: flea-size isopods that eat wood softened up by salt water. They've been munching away at Seattle's Elliott Bay seawall for decades. Each gribble has four mouths, a healthy appetite, and a symbiotic partnership with a bacterium that breaks down creosote.
 9. These buildings, with load-bearing walls made of brick or masonry, were typical in the early 1900s. They tend to collapse like the proverbial ton of bricks. California banned the construction technique as early as 1933 and required existing structures to undergo seismic retrofitting in the 1970s. In Seattle, about one-third of all unreinforced-masonry buildings have been retrofitted.

Buildings begin to shake apart at the two-minute mark. Bricks rain onto side­­­walks. In house base­ments, hot-water heaters topple and rupture natural-gas pipes. Fires flare. In some communities, fire crews can't respond because the earthquake has warped ­garage-­door frames. If they can get out, it's a crapshoot as to whether they'll have enough ­water pressure to fight the fire, because the earthquake has ruptured water lines.10

Along Seattle's waterfront, fire isn't the problem. By minute two, piers begin to collapse. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Ivar's Acres of Clams, two fixtures of the waterfront, slump into the bay. Power lines snap across the Northwest. There are no active nuclear facilities in the area, but along the Columbia River, high-voltage transmission lines connected to the river's hydroelectric dams sway and topple into the river. Power grids across the West experience dramatic drops in supply.

In Portland, a city famous for its bridges, the spans begin to buckle. The Marquam Bridge carries Interstate 5 over the Willamette River. In 1995, engineers installed shock ­absorbers and restraint cables throughout the structure as part of a seismic retrofit. As a result, it remains upright. The Fremont Bridge, which holds Interstate 405, was built in 1973. It topples into the Willamette. Along U.S. High­way 101, the coast's main north-south corridor, dozens of bridges go down.

In Seaside and Cannon Beach, lifeguards blow their whistles and stagger down the shore­line to call people in from the water. They know what's coming. In Ocean Shores, there are no lifeguards. Most tourists stay put.

MINUTE 3:00
 As the shaking continues, the northern ­Pacific coastline sinks. The elastic strain that caused roads to rise slowly over 312 years is being released in a matter of minutes. The coast drops—whump—five feet in elevation.

There are more than 900 modern high-rise buildings in Vancouver, Seattle, and Port­­land. More than half were ­constructed before 1997, when most urban design codes were up­dated to reflect the possibility of a CSZ mega­quake. In downtown Seattle, there are reports of glass-and-steel ­office buildings buckling. This is hard to ­believe: weren't they designed to flex and roll with an earthquake? Well, yes. But not this kind of earthquake. Most modern 20-to-40-story buildings are designed to survive nearby crustal earthquakes but not large subduction-zone events. Crustal earth­quakes send out high-frequency waves; subduction-zone quakes send out low-­frequency waves over longer distances. In some parts of Seattle, those waves react to Seattle's soft soil like sound waves hitting a bullhorn. Along the waterfront, Harbor ­Island, and the Du­wam­ish Valley, ground motion will be two to five times as violent, and last twice as long, as it would at a comparable site on bedrock. In those areas, some buildings will collapse.

The Space Needle is not collapsing. In fact, it may be the safest building in town. With its tripod legs, inner steel core, and massive under­­ground foundation, the Needle was built to survive 100-mph winds and a 9.0 earthquake. But low-frequency seismic waves have sent the Needle into a side-to-side whip like a car's antenna. Now 78 visitors trapped in the top house stagger to walls and girders like storm-tossed sailors. Some splay out flat on the floor. The early stages of seasickness rumble in their guts. One ­woman recalls the spec­tacular view she enjoyed a mere three minutes ago and thinks, Boy, it's a long 600 feet down.

MINUTE 5:00
 Five minutes and 17 seconds after it began, the earthquake stops. The University of ­Wash­ington Seismology Lab tags it as the largest in the region's recorded history. Globally, it ranks as the third-largest ever recorded by modern seismic instruments.

10. In terms of fire, Seattle's actually in better shape than most other cities, having spent $197 million in 2004 to quake-­harden its fire units. The SFD's firehouse doors all open. The department has pumps and mile-long hoses to draw water ­directly from Puget Sound, Lake Washington, or any of nine reservoirs.

The worst is over for Seattle and Portland. But in the beach towns, the countdown has begun. A tsunami that will inundate the coast­line is now about 35 miles offshore. It will reach dry land in a little more than 15 minutes. There are 7,500 people in the inun­dation zone in Ocean Shores. Seaside: 15,000. Cannon Beach: 7,800.

Take the advice on the T-shirt. Grab beer. Run like hell.

MINUTE 6:00
 The beach at Seaside is one of the glories of the Oregon coast. It's flat, wide, vanilla-gray, and gorgeous. The lifeguards continue to herd swimmers and sunbathers away, but some are unconvinced. They don't hear the tsunami sirens, or, having been through tests of the sirens in the past, ignore them.11 "This is no joke," one tells a visitor. "You need to move. Now." Move where? people ask. "Walk up Broadway," the lifeguard says, "and don't stop until you're at the top of a hill!"

The walk to Broadway takes three minutes. At this point the beachgoers are faced with a life-or-death decision. A crowd has formed at the doors to the Wyndham resort, an eight-story beachside hotel-and-condo complex. People are shouting and pushing their way through the doors, calling out for family members.

Hard data has never been more valuable to these people. "Is it tall enough?" one person wonders aloud. "Will it stand?" another asks. The Wyndham's windows are all shat­tered, but otherwise it looks structurally sound. It's a long half-mile trek to high ground, with two bridges to cross. Rumors ricochet around the crowd: The bridge is down! No, it's standing! Both pieces of information are true. There are seven critical bridges in Seaside. Some have survived the earthquake, some haven't. The manager of the Wyndham appeals for calm. He's old enough to recall the Who concert, Cincinnati, 1980, the killing crush of crowds and doors. He makes an appeal: Those who can walk should walk—Wyndham staff are already leading guests to high ground.

"How far is it?" someone asks. "Half a mile," the manager says. "Oh, Lord, I'd never make it," says an elderly woman in a pink T-shirt. "I can't walk that far."

For the beachgoers, two precious minutes are wasted mulling over the best strategy. A general cul­ling takes place. The firm and the fleet decide to keep walking. The ­elderly, the broken-down, the obese, the calculating, and the stubborn file into the Wyndham. ­Nobody has told them that the city­wide power ­outage has knocked the ele­vators out of commission. The crowd slowly trudges up eight flights of stairs. Strong men and women, strangers, band ­together in teams to carry the ­elderly and disabled up to the roof.

11. In Japanese coastal towns, that's exactly what happened in March. A tsunami alarm a few months earlier had sent locals scurrying for high ground. The water came in like a lamb, less than a meter high.

A parade of stunned hu­man­ity files up ­Broad­way. Beach­goers who came away without their shoes now find the sidewalks littered with broken glass. They wrap their feet in T-shirts until they reach the Old Crab gift shop. There, one guy starts dumping armloads of flip-flops onto the sidewalk. "If your feet are bleeding, I have sandals!" he yells. "Please keep moving!"

Earthquake debris has made driving impossible. Still, some people try. They honk their horns and attempt to maneuver through the crowds. Eventually they abandon their cars and walk.

MINUTE 8:00
 The first wave is about 25 miles offshore. It slows as it reaches shallower depths but loses little of its power. The water along the coast begins to recede.

In the major fishing harbors, a panicked exodus is under way. During the quake, boat owners recalled that tsunamis pass peacefully under vessels on the open ocean. They also remembered images of con­tainer ships perched atop four-story buildings in Sendai. Now they're motoring all-out for open water. In Westport, Washington, a charter-fishing port directly south of Ocean Shores, dozens of vessels parade out of Grays Harbor. Fifty miles south, in ­Astoria, commercial fishing trawlers try to outrace the tsunami by heading up the ­Columbia River. They aren't aware that a dam upriver has been damaged by the quake and is in ­imminent danger of breach.

In subduction-zone quakenamis like the one that hit Sumatra in 2004, tourists are ­often the most clueless about what to do. In Sea­side, Broadway has become a parade of hurting-but-helping humanity, all heading east. Except ... there's one solitary figure weav­ing his way west. Toward the ocean. He's kind of a dirtbag. No shirt, just an old swim­suit and huaraches, rock­­ing the white-dude dreads. Under his arm is a surfboard.

One of the retreating lifeguards spots him. "Dude!" he calls out. "Don't do it!"

The surfer waves to the lifeguard and continues walking. Three days later they'll find pieces of his board. His body will never be found.12

12. Crazy as it seems, he won't be the only one on the beach. With every tsunami warning, there's always a small contingent of mixed nuts who drift down to watch the action and form a flash mob of Darwin Award nominees. At any rate, it's physically impossible to surf a tsunami. Often called tidal waves, they aren't "waves" at all. There is no face, no pipe, no curl. A tsunami is more like a storm surge. Common waves are created by wind energy. Tsunamis are created by the massive displacement of water, and terrifying Japanese woodblock prints notwithstanding, they don't break like wind waves. They come ashore more like enormous high tides, with a low, inches-high leading edge backed by a steadily rising onrush of water. A 40-foot-high tsunami does not come ashore as a 40-foot-high wave. It steadily builds to that height with each successive pulse.

MINUTE 13:00
 In Ocean Shores, which is built on a ­sandspit six miles long and three miles wide, high ground is miles away. Most locals have jumped into their cars, making their way slowly north on Point Brown Avenue. Lique­faction has chop­ped up the road, though. Only four-wheel-drive trucks and SUVs can get past the sloppy sand breaks. A few good Samaritans encourage others to hop in the backs of their flatbeds. Others blow past.

In Cannon Beach, a power outage prevents town officials from broadcasting a tsunami warning. A city planner runs down to Haystack Rock, the town's iconic landmark, with a whistle. He blows it wildly and yells at two dozen out-of-towners, who seem mesmerized by the receding tide and the bare seafloor. A few listen and follow him to the ­Ecola Creek bridge. But it has collapsed, creat­ing a pinch point. For years the town had discussed the possibility of retro­­­fitting the bridge. City officials wanted to build a new $3 million structure strong enough to withstand a tsunami, but nobody could ever come up with the funds.13

MINUTE 17:00
 The crowds in Seaside continue up Broadway, crossing Highway 101, filing past the Chamber of Commerce and Broadway School. ­Finally, at Wahanna Road, a half-mile from the beach, the road begins to climb. At a look­out point, somebody passes a pair of binoculars around. The tide has gone out. And then suddenly it rushes back in.

At Oregon State University's O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, one of the world's leading tsunami-research centers, wave hydro­­­logists have run sophisticated ­simu­lations of a CSZ-generated tsunami hitting Seaside, Cannon Beach, and other coastal towns. The findings do not suggest sticking around. "A lot depends on wave speed," says Solomon Yim, director of the lab. "We found that in some blocks of densely packed houses, the first line of houses took the brunt and the second line was shielded." The specifics of the tests haven't been released to the public for fear of causing an upheaval in the local real estate market. "If your building was one that did not survive the simulated tsunami," says Yim, "it would be ... not so good for the resale value, you see."

MINUTE 18:00
 The leading edge of the tsunami hits the beach at Seaside. From the roof of the ­Wyndham, hundreds of people watch and record the ­water crashing ashore and flowing up Broadway. It comes in like a tide moving at flash-flood speed. Just a trickle at first, but within seconds it's knee-high and then lapping at windows.

By the time it neared shore, the pulse of ­water had slowed to about 30 miles per hour. On dry land, it moves inland at a speed of 11 mph. To outpace the tsunami, you'd have to run at least a 5:30 mile.

The Wyndham and its neighbor, the five-story Shilo Inn, act like a nozzle. The water, black and powerful, jets through the opening between them: Broadway. Stragglers try to run, but the flow sweeps their feet from ­under them. Some hold on to lampposts. The ­water pushes wood, metal, and glass into them. The surge is strong enough to bend two-inch metal pipes.

13. "They're debating about whether they should build a $7 million bridge," Corcoran says. "You don't need a $7 million bridge high enough and strong enough to withstand the quake and the tsunami! You need a $1 million bridge strong enough to survive the earthquake, so people can cross it to escape the tsunami. However it's built, it's not going to survive the tsunami."

One- and two-story buildings groan. The water is reaching their rooflines and twisting their foundations. Some begin to lift and float up Broadway.

"Seals!" someone shouts. True. There are seals swimming up Broadway alongside the bob­­bing SUVs. The 75-year-old Seaside Aquar­­ium, a several-story wooden building, did not survive the initial earthquake. Two of its harbor seals were crushed by falling debris. Two others were killed by the onrushing ­tsu­nami. The survivors now swim around the drowned town, con­fused by the water's darkness, its oily taste and smell.

The water keeps rising. It has overtaken the third floor of the Shilo Inn.

MINUTE 19:00
 In Cannon Beach, the tsunami swallows up half of Haystack Rock and rushes up to the steps of City Hall. In Ocean Shores, anybody who hasn't gotten out yet won't. A few holdouts take refuge in another Shilo Inn,14 at four stories the tallest building in town. It's not tall enough, as its staff have warned those who stay behind. The ocean has now entirely overtaken Ocean Shores.

In Seaside, the crowd atop the Wyndham watches in horror as the water overtops the Shilo Inn across the street. People on roof­­tops leap into the water and attempt to swim to the Wyndham. But tsunami ­water is thick with sediment, wood, metal, and glass. It's dif­ficult to move in. Gas fumes from broken lines make it hard to breathe. Many who try to swim drown. Those who cling to floating objects have a better chance of survival.

MINUTE 21:00
 People in Seattle and Portland—those who have power and whose cellular networks are still functioning—watch live footage of the tsu­nami on their smartphones, shot by news helicopters. They wonder if it will hit the cities.

It probably won't. To reach Portland, the tsunami would have to muscle its way up 75 miles of the Columbia River and hang a hard right at the Willamette River. Seattle is similarly protected by the topography of Puget Sound. The tsunami will likely slosh up the sides of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and ­expend its residual energy on the western shore of rural, sparsely populated Whidbey Island.

14. I'm not picking on the Shilo Inn company, which has 40 convenient locations in 10 western states. They just happen to site some of their hotels on prime oceanfront property. Those beachside resorts are big enough to lure panicked tsunami evacuees but often not tall enough to provide refuge from the flood. Guests would be evacuated.

There could be a strange mini-tsunami effect in Puget Sound, however. Hydrologists call it a seiche. It's like what happens when you kick a dog's water bowl. The water sloshes back and forth in slowly diminishing waves. A handful of people who wander down to shore to watch the arrival of the tsunami will get sucked into the sound.

MINUTE 60:00
 Secondary tsunami pulses batter the coast. They'll continue for eight to ten hours.

Survivors in Ocean Shores, Seaside, and Can­non Beach won't get their towns back for days or weeks. Over the next month, more than 2,000 aftershocks will hit. Eighty-three of those will be big enough to be felt. Five will be above magnitude 7.0.

The Northwest coastline's elevation has drop­ped three to five feet. Normal high tides will now be flooding houses, hotels, and streets twice a day. In Ocean Shores, the situation is especially dire. Prior to the mega­quake, the highest point on the sandbar pen­insula was 14 feet in elevation. Now it's nine. The lobby of the Shilo Inn, now a wrecked shell, is lower than sea level.

Among disaster-relief experts, the ­calam­ities of the past decade have forced the realization of a truism: first responders are victims; victims are first responders. In other words, firefighters, police, military, and medi­­­cal workers are among those killed and injured in the disaster. And civilian victims (the able-bodied, at least) become de facto first responders.

President Obama makes unsuccessful ­attempts to reach Oregon governor John Kitz­haber and Washington governor Christine Gregoire. A massive surge of traffic has crashed the Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile networks across the Northwest. But, having witnessed FEMA's dismal performance after Hurricane Katrina and during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, nobody is counting on the federal cavalry to come to the rescue. The Red Cross and other groups show up within hours. But in the year 2012, most disaster recovery is DIY.

That's especially true along the coast, where each town has been islandized. Highway 101 has been snipped into a hundred pieces. Nearly all bridges are down. State, county, and town officials quickly set up staging areas, but there's very little top-down coordination. Food, shelter, medical care, and fuel are the immediate priorities. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Local social networks come into play. In Seaside and Cannon Beach, city officials work with fishermen and hunters, who have boats and ATVs. Air National Guard helicopters ferry the injured from coastal towns to hospitals in Richland, Washington; Bend, Oregon; and Salt Lake City.

The Newport, Oregon, Walmart becomes one of the coast's critical staging points for both food and material. As they did ­during Hurricane Katrina, Walmart executives in Benton­ville, Arkansas, get word to their store managers: Do whatever it takes to help your communities. Autonomy is yours. The company's distribution network begins moving food, medicine, and building supplies to Oak­land and Long Beach, California, where they will be loaded onto chartered container ships and sent to Newport. From there, a mos­quito fleet of private boats moves the goods the final miles to affected communities. Other stores—Safeway, Home Depot, and Costco—follow Walmart's lead. The U.S. Navy stations a floating fuel dock in Newport to keep the flotilla moving.

EPILOGUE
 Six months after the megaquake and tsunami, the official death toll stands at 7,241. More than 3,200 were killed in or around Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver. Many died when older houses collapsed. Others were killed by falling objects or died in fires. A num­ber succumbed to heart attacks, and 679 were killed by the tsunami.

That's far fewer than the tens of thousands who died in the Japanese tsunami of 2011. The difference isn't attributable to better ­plan­ning, stronger buildings, or quicker evac­­u­ations. It's simply a function of population. Millions of people live on the coast of Japan, whereas the Washington and Oregon coasts are barely inhabited. There are no nuclear power plants along the coast of either state.

State and federal officials wrestle with the question of rebuilding Ocean Shores. In the end, the town is abandoned to the sea. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admini­stration partners with the Environmental Pro­tection Agency to remove hundreds of fuel-oil tanks and other hazardous material to prevent leaching into the ocean.

By its one-year anniversary, the event has become known as the Great Cascadia Earthquake. It was the most powerful earth­­quake known to have hit the continental ­United States, and one of the three most powerful earth­quakes since modern record-keeping began. It triggered tsunami surges of up to 51 feet in Ocean Shores, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Newport, and other coastal towns and traveled up to six miles inland. In addition to the deaths, FEMA confirmed 27,567 injured and 135 people missing across 37 counties, as well as more than 42,500 buildings damaged or destroyed. One dam on the Columbia River came close to collapse. Around 3.5 million households in the Pacific Northwest were left without electricity, and one million with­out water. Estimates placed insured losses from the earthquake alone at $5.5 billion to $14.6 billion. The overall cost could exceed $30 billion, making it one of the most expensive natural disasters in American history.

The earthquake moved North America 57 feet west and shifted the earth on its axis by esti­mates of between 8 and 20 inches.

The Great Cascadia Earthquake also left a number of people jobless, including Patrick Corco­ran. That didn't last long, though. Within six months, he is running FEMA's state­­wide recovery effort. People on the coast recognize him now and then from his ­tsu­nami-preparedness work before the ­disaster. And they thank him.

"All those years," he'd tell people, "I kind of felt like the boy who cried wolf. But what people don't remember is how the story turned out. In the end, there really was a wolf."

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Totally-Psyched-for-the-Full-Rip-Nine.html?page=all

[jand]

And another volcano is starting to have earthquake swarms.

Copied from Avcan.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/seismic/volcweb/earthquakes/

Swarm from midnight yesterday Hawai¨ª seismic, not only occur in the iron and is just under the caldera of K¨©lauea, very close where is located the HVO, about 4 km to the NW of the crater Halema 'uma' u and about 5 km of depth with two notable earthquakes of 3.0 and 3.2 and a rate of about 6 earthquakes hourly...... continue at this time. Zoom in on the map, is spectacular. When that despresurice, the Kilauea we will offer a new eruptive show... a regret that already is in eruption... (Henry)

[jand]

earthquake-report.com

Some people went today to the Tacoron beach to enjoy this great area. Pevolca has told the press a couple of days ago that the Tacoron coast would re-open. Joke immediately went over there and has photographed the coast, pictures we published directly. Well, today the people were not allowed to enter the area anymore and were stopped by the Guardia Civil. It is uncertain whether this happened because the authorities had not installed the necessary signs yet (something Pevolca has said too however they had many days to do so) or because new developments are happening which we do not know.  This is a clear example of bad communication.
 - 5 earthquakes so far
 - same minimal HT than the last couple of days. The short period of jacuzzi has not been continued later today.

[jand]

http://www.diariodeavisos.com/


While a submarine volcano continues vomiting lava and gas off the coast of La Restinga, another volcanic crisis heats in the offices of scientists, technicians of political and civil protection. In herreña eruption, this científica-política crisis broke out with an earthquake, in this case by way of release: the General Directorate of Civil protection, dependent of the Ministry of the Interior, announced the implementation launched a project to develop a national plan to sort the answer to a future volcanic eruption.

On 10 February, invited by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior, Luis Aguilera Ruiz, met in Madrid officials of seven ministries, scientists and the general director of security and emergency of the Comunicad autonomous of the Canary Islands, Juan Manuel Santana. Although there was no representation of any Canary scientific institution in the table, the first item on the agenda was analysing the current state of the volcanic eruption in El Hierro.

However, has not been this absence which has raised blisters between the Canary Islands volcanologists. At the same meeting was announced the launch of a draft State Plan of Civil protection before the volcanic risk. According to this entity, the plan becomes necessary since "Spain has an area of major volcanic activity in the autonomous community of the Canary Islands and with a lower activity in Olot (Girona) and Campos de Calatrava (Ciudad Real)".

According to Nemesio Perez, researcher at the Instituto Volcanológico de Canarias (Involcan) "equate the volcanism in the Canary Islands with the Girona or Ciudad Real is contrary to scientific knowledge, Canary Islands is the only region of Spain with active volcanism". Here Professor of geological engineering of the Complutense University of Madrid Luis González of Vallejo stated that the volcanic monitoring in these peninsular territories "lacks scientific sense and this, with the science in the hand is not opinion". Vallejo believed that "treat them like other probable risks, would raise the bar on criteria for danger to 10,000 years, something which unilaterally can be made, but lacks common sense and discretion." Studying volcanoes of Olot or Campos de Calatrava is a common task among volcanologists, geographers, geologists and historians of this country. "Monitor volcanoes as if they were those of the Canary Islands, has no justification".

If we look at the geological history of Spain we see that in the last 500 years have been approximately 12 eruptions in the national territory, all of them in the Canary Islands. To find rashes on mainland soil must go back to 10,000 years ago, in the case of Olot and 1.5 million years in Ciudad Real.

According to Nemesio Perez, "this decision contradicts the basic guideline of planning of Civil protection to the volcanic risk adopted by the Council of Ministers in January 1996#8243;. This document clarifies that "in Spain, the only volcanically active area, in the light of current knowledge, is the Canary Islands, having suffered two volcanic crisis in recent years". According to the document, which is available on the Internet, the territorial scope of the volcanic monitoring should be restricted exclusively to the autonomous community of Canary Islands. Pérez attributed the introduction of these new territories to the "pursuit of other research groups for funding, an intention which will harm investment in monitoring volcanic islands, since that would deliver a budget already if adjusted". For its part, sources of the Directorate-General have expressed that it is only a draft, and that technicians that will decide that regions are finally included in the plan. However it seems that the bureaucratic tangle is also implemented in the Islands. According to the researcher of Involcan, "the Government of the Canary Islands and the Pevolca have disfigured the spirit and the letter of the basic guideline". Pérez notes that own the Pevolca scheme generates confusion because it has assumed greater powers than their fair share by nature, such as having an own Scientific Committee.

The history of the coordination of emergencies in case of volcanic eruption begins in the year 1996. That year, the Directorate General of Civil Protection drawn up the basic guideline, a document which marks the lines of action for this type of natural phenomena. In this standard, 13 pages, collects the roadmap of future actions to be taken to meet emergencies related to volcanic eruptions. The document establishes that the Scientific Committee should be chaired by the representative of the Government and which shall meet ordinarily, once a year. This has not been fulfilled.

The same document urges Canary to write its own emergency plan, as it is the only territory where there is an active volcanism. However, in 2004, when the southwest of Tenerife began recording earthquakes and, even, were toyed with the possibility of an eruption on the island, the regional Government recognized that, eight years after the recommendation, had not yet drawn up its own emergency plan.

Before this, the Government of the Canary Islands, the State Government and the Cabildo de Tenerife established a plan of coordinated action to a possible volcanic crisis on the island. Fortunately the anomalous seismic activity in 2004 came to nothing but served so that Canary emergency plan be implemented. A plan, the Pevolca, which was finally adopted by the Canarian President in 2010, fourteen years after the recommendation of Madrid, six years after the crisis of Tenerife and one year prior to the volcanic eruption in El Hierro.

Reply

[jand]

Note 458 AVCAN - earthquake activity - VOLCANIC - island of HIERRO - 23 February 2012-11: 45 pm peninsular - earthquake and volcanic activity is continuing moderate Seismicity in the Gulf and in the calm sea and one for the area of summits and the coast of the Julan. Continuous played quite microsismicidad detected but not located in the spectrogram. Continues the signal of volcanic tremor in the eruptive area of la Restinga, which remains low but disminuyendoligeramente. New earthquakes 9. Magnitude between 2.6 and 0.9. Depths between 10.6 and 11.5km (and one to 9.5 and three to 13.3, 14.1 and 15.9km). 16 The day before yesterday. Yesterday 6. Today go 6. In total van 12367 earthquakes located in El Hierro by IGN from 9: 00 a.m. of the day 19 July 2011 (Henry).

http://www.avcan.org/mapas/AVCAN2791.jpg?d=1329993577

[jand]

Update 23/02 – 08:17 UTC -  is El Hierro resembling Hawaii ?
 - The earthquake activity continues as IGN listed 6 earthquakes so far today
 - In our title we talk about Hawaii. Why ? Because a lot of scientists (not all of them) are convinced that both Hawaii and El Hierro are Hot Spot volcanoes, this contrary to subduction volcanoes like the Andes volcanoes (subduction means that the Oceanic plate dives below the continental plate and that part of the re-melted oceanic plate does create volcanoes by fissuring into the continental plate.
 In case of Hot Spot volcanoes, we are (simplified) talking of weak points in the oceanic plates.  The solid rock part of these plates (the crust) is very thin (10 to 15 km), below this thickness a variety of hotter material creates other sections (that is one of the main reasons why most of the earthquakes are occurring at a depth of 10 km or more). Magma tries to find weak areas in this material. This process can be found all over the ocean floors where hot vents and submarine volcanoes (if extinct also called seamounts) are doing exactly the same (there are thousands of them).
 The Kilauea volcano on Hawaii, Hawaii (the big island) is just like El Hierro the youngest island of a volcano chain that grew above sea level. The older islands are moving away from the weakest point by the normal moving oceanic plates (10 to 100 mm per year depending on the location, which makes hundreds of km's over millions of years). Maui, another volcano island has ie Haleakala volcano, a dormant volcano in the Hawaiian chain. Maui can be compared with La Palma, second youngest island in the Canary island chain.





image courtesy faculty.weber.edu

The Kilauea volcano at Hawaii is constantly active since many years. Some periods are calm, but nevertheless the lava lake is partly filled and the eruption continues by channeling magma through lava tubes to the ocean. At regular times the eruption process intensifies and creates high intensity eruptions like a full crater lake, creating a stream of lava or even rift eruptions along the crater line.  What El Hierro experiences at the moment is almost the same. Early November, a submarine rift eruption occurred (see video and pictures Guardia Civil / Involcan) and since many months the cone builds up by flowing lava (even today with limited HT).
 Main difference with Hawaii : the depth of most of the earthquakes. The cracks in the Hawaiian crust are in average at a depth of 4 to 6 km, a lot shallower than the average El Hierro quakes.
 We hope that "Wally" the ROV on board of the Atlantic Explorer will soon give us a proof of what is happening near the El Hierro main vent. If the crew of the Atlantic Explorer would succeed in delivering footage of the eruption, it would be a big blame to the other agencies working on this eruption.

[jand]

Diana Barnes says:

 February 24, 2012 at 07:45


Good morning everyone. Bob is quiet but the latest small quakes are on land below Tanganasoga.
 1128407 24/02/2012 04:38:58 27.7215 -18.0641 10 1.5 mbLg SW FRONTERA.IHI

1128259 23/02/2012 00:28:34 27.7079 -18.0779 11 1.6 mbLg SW FRONTERA.IHI

some more small ones this morning too but in the sea of calms.
 Katla gets ready for Friday night too!
 http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/#view=map

[jand]

In IGN today have been reviewing earthquakes, the first today already what had advance, but had not seen that yesterday there are 9 new and 3 more than antesdeayer, almost all of them under the summits, in total area 12 new earthquakes which placed the total 12379 earthquakes located in El Hierro by IGN from 9: 00 a.m. of the day 19 July 2011 (Henry)

EARTHQUAKES DAY 23 FEB. -Red (7)
 EARTHQUAKES DAY 22 FEB. -Yellow (16) new 9
 EARTHQUAKES DAY 21 FEB. -Green course (19) 3 new
 EARTHQUAKES DAY 20 FEB. -Dark blue (19)
 EARTHQUAKES DAY 19 FEB. -Pink (

http://www.avcan.org/mapas/AVCAN2798.jpg?d=1330035353

[jand]

Un ruego a Gobierno de Canarias o a los encargados de la unidad de medición de calidad del aire en La Restinga. Desde ayer ese aparato dice que hay temperatura de 50ºC (desierto) con 100% de humedad y presión barométrica de 949, vients de 1...#8203;#8203;#8203;See More

A plea to Government of the Canary Islands or to those responsible for the unit of measurement of the air quality in La Restinga. Since yesterday the device says there are temperature of 50 ° C (desert) with 100% humidity and barometric pressure of 949, vients of 180 km/h (hurricane). And it seems that measurements of gases are not working. It would be interesting to keep watching how they evolve these measurements. Please to see if they can return to tune. Thank you. http://www.gobiernodecanarias.org/cmayot/calidadaire/tiemporeal.jsp