![]() ![]() Long before a formal division was organized for the task-FEMA wasn’t established by Jimmy Carter’s executive order until 1979-the Hoh people ensured each others’ safety. Everyone knew who had vehicles and who needed extra help. Advanced warnings and neighbors helping neighbors meant there was little risk of injury, even when a particularly mighty wave devoured canoes and construction sites. Evidence of the CSZ’s power has always existed in Indigenous stories and oral histories.īut Leitka wasn’t afraid. Everyone would evacuate the area and gather on a hill overlooking the lower Hoh reservation as rising waters-set in motion by earthquakes halfway around the world, in Japan and Chile-flooded the coast. Back when she was a child living by the Hoh River, on the Olympic Peninsula, the Coast Guard would ring the family’s black-and-brown tsunami-dedicated telephone magneto. Leitka vividly remembers the story’s intended message: When the ground quivers or the tide pulls away from shore, get to high ground. ![]() In the ensuing struggle, Thunderbird’s wings flapped hard against the surface, causing the ground to shake and waves to ripple outward-waves that gave rise to the tsunamis that have lashed the coast of the Pacific Northwest for millennia. When Thunderbird thrust his talons into Whale’s back, Whale resisted being lifted from the water. Thunderbird and Whale, she says, were two mythical beasts with supernatural strength who battled to the death. Mary Leitka, a tribal elder, is recounting a Hoh legend centuries older than the building she sits in. Vinyl tablecloths cover the counters, and disco hits bubble beneath the restaurant chatter. It’s just before the golden hour in a nondescript diner on the outskirts of Tacoma, Washington. Mary Leitka Natasha Donovan for Atlas Obscura The Protector Their hope is a shared one: that knowledge of what’s to come will help the region’s residents survive when the next megathrust earthquake rolls in. Mary Leitka, David Yamaguchi, Brian Atwater, and Jessie Pearl are just four of the individuals working to understand the CSZ and help safeguard against it. And everyone is focused on training the next generation to pick up where their predecessors leave off. Indigenous community leaders are readying the area’s coastal residents, some of the least prepared and most geographically vulnerable. Scientists are mining the earth for data to predict the wheres and whens. Behind the scenes, an unlikely consortium of earthquake guardians has found common cause, working to alert Cascadia’s residents to the CSZ’s power. While no amount of knowledge or preparation can stop the unstoppable, both can mitigate the damage. Yet the importance of disaster awareness here has never been greater. And for good reason: It’s hard to focus on an invisible fault line fracturing when a global contagion is actively killing people. As life in Cascadia carries on-strong rain, stronger coffee, Birkenstocks aplenty-the COVID-19 pandemic has become public enemy No. Worse yet, a magnitude-9 rupture along the CSZ could trigger the San Andreas as well.īut for most residents of the region, that threat is mounting far offstage. It would be an unavoidable economic and humanitarian disaster from Vancouver Island to northern California. Buildings would crumble, and thousands would die. Schulz’s story explains exactly what could happen should the CSZ shake the earth with its full seismic potential. For most residents of the region, the threat is mounting far offstage. The odds of a lesser but still major event are even greater. There’s a one-in-10 chance that the next major Cascadia quake will occur sometime in the next 50 years. Seven times in the past 3,500 years, the CSZ has buckled and fractured to produce an earthquake so massive that it left a mark in the geologic record. The story by Kathryn Schulz, titled “ The Really Big One,” reminded some about-and introduced many more to-the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), a geological hotspot that rivals the famous San Andreas Fault. But just offshore from the postcard-worthy landscapes is a seismic threat as catastrophic as any on earth.īack in 2015, a prominent New Yorker article sounded the alarm on Cascadia’s tsunami and earthquake problem. ![]()
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