Huge Quake Predicted for Seattle Area
18-Aug-2003
Seattle could experience a one-two punch. First, an earthquake
reaching 9 on the Richter Scale could strike the Pacific Northwest. A
quake of this intensity would be enough to pulverize skyscrapers and
kill people where they stood. Along with the predicted eruption of Mt.
Rainier, this foretells a dire future for the area.

Jill Stoddard, of the Columbia University Earth Institute, writes that
new research on the coastal waters off Vancouver reveals that the area
where the Juan de Fuca and North America plates overlap is almost
twice the size seismologists thought it was, and the greater the
overlap, the more friction that's built up, resulting in a more
powerful earthquake. They've also discovered that the earthquake zone
extends farther towards the mainland than they realized, creating an
additional hazard for coastal communities.

This zone could create so much energy when it finally releases that it
would produce one of the largest earthquakes in history. It would
release 1,000 times the energy of the 2001 Seattle earthquake, which
registered only 6.8 on the Richter Scale.

We have to hope this isn't Seattle's final hour.