cascadia subduction zone

There is a new option to escape a tsunami if you’re on the southwest coast of Washington when the Big One strikes. The Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe on Friday dedicated a 50-foot tall evacuation tower in Tokeland, Washington. Tribal leaders and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the new tsunami refuge platform should be an example and inspiration for other vulnerable coastal communities.

Close to 200 federal, state and tribal emergency preparedness planners gathered around a giant map of the Pacific Northwest this week to rehearse and critique the federal response plan for "The Big One." The three-day Cascadia earthquake discussion exercise partially replaced a much bigger planned dress rehearsal that was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The January 15 volcanic eruption near Tonga was a stark reminder of the threats posed by tsunamis. That's long been a concern in the Pacific Northwest, where thousands of students go to school within reach of a large tsunami. Oregon and Washington have been plugging away at retrofitting schools to withstand earthquakes. But the burden of relocating low-lying schools falls largely on local taxpayers. A vote-by-mail school bond election now underway in a coastal section of Grays Harbor County, Washington, will test voter appetite to pay higher taxes to build tsunami-safe schools.

According to a new state study, dozens of elevated evacuation platforms are needed along Washington's Pacific Coast to ensure people can escape a tsunami spawned by a major earthquake on the offshore Cascadia fault zone.

Earthquake researchers are eager to dig into a trove of new data about the offshore Cascadia fault zone. The valuable new imaging of the geology off the Oregon, Washington and British Columbia coasts comes from a specialized research ship. The National Science Foundation seismic survey ship Marcus Langseth zigged and zagged over the full length of the undersea Cascadia Subduction Zone -- from the Oregon-California border north to Vancouver Island.

Just off the highway near Washington’s Tri-Cities, 20 miles southeast of Pasco, Steve Angster steps into a giant trench. In it, the U.S. Geological Survey…

The state of Oregon is pushing the community hospitals along the Oregon Coast to improve their earthquake resilience. This comes after a state report…

Did you feel the ground move today, or yesterday or over the weekend? Not likely, even though a wave of small tremors was spreading under people's feet in…

How's this for emergency preparedness? An elementary school located in the tsunami inundation zone in Cannon Beach, Oregon, has equipped every student…

Last September, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake followed by a tsunami devastated a region of Indonesia, killing more than 4,300 people. Two Oregon State and…