The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest

When the Cascadia fault line ruptures, it could be North America’s worst natural disaster in recorded history.

Save this story Save this story When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time. Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-th

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• Rona Wang
• Michael Yao
• Calista Oetama
• Vincent Huang
• Eric Liu

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