Discussion Board – Earthquakes

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Living with Earthquakes

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What’s your Perspective on Earthquakes

As we all know, earthquakes are a daily part of living on planet earth. Earthquakes have been around as long as planet earth has been around. This has allowed continental masses to grow and human civilizations to prosper. Unfortunately an earthquake in Turkey-Syria a few years ago, resulted in the lost of human life (about 50,000 people).

Because of some excellent geological field work, there is a mapped fault zone in North America called the Cascadia Subduction Zone (see maps below) that on average, produces a 9.0 or larger magnitude earthquake about every 400-600 years, although intervals have been as low as 200 years and as high as 1,000 years. The southern zone has earthquakes on average about every 240 years and has a 40% chance of a major earthquake (8-8.5) in the next 50 years, and a 10-15% chance of a magnitude 9.0 within the next 50 years. The last major earthquake was 1700 so we are 323 years since that date.