by The earthquake of the Kamchatka Peninsula may not have brought the same devastation as previous shocks, but a much more fatal seismic event is for the west coast of the United States.
An important 600 miles known as the Cascadia substance zone runs from North Vancouver Island in Canada to Cape Mendocino in Northern California.
Scientists have predicted that in the next 50 years there is a probability of 15 percent for a large earthquake that could bring a mega tonsami hundreds of foot up to US coast.
A study by Virginia Tech in April showed that an earthquake of violence could lead to the fact that the coastal country sank 6.5 feet within minutes, devastating cities such as Seattle and Portland and the flooding of hundreds of kilometers of streets, airports, schools, hospitals and power plants.
The researchers found that the heaviest effects would have densely populated areas in Northern California, South -Washington and North Oregon.
Like the Kamchatka quake, the Cascadia default line is located in the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ -a 25,000 -mile horseshoe of 452 volcanoes that extend from the South Tipin of South America along the coast of North America across the Bering Strait, Japan and New Zealand.
The ring produces around 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes.
Pacific fire ring
Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical & climate dangers at the University of College London, said: “Together with many active volcanoes, large earthquakes are a feature of the so-called fire ring, whereby everyone has accumulated a variety that has accumulated over centuries over centuries as an excessive tectonic plate at the following accumulation on one has released. “
Earthquakes rarely cause mass pollution because they tend to occur in the most important population groups, and added: “Although local destructive tsunami heights appear to be modest in remote places such as Hawaii and Japan, so widespread devastation and loss of life is unlikely.”
The last big earthquake in the Cascadia -subduction zone occurred on January 26, 1700, and geological evidence show that it caused dramatic land and drowned coastal holidays in the northwest of Pacific.
Geological evidence from the past six to seven years indicate that 11 large earthquakes have occurred about every 200 to 800 years, which means that “the big one” may be imminent.
The Cascadia subduction zone consists of the risk of a “big one”
“This is not a distant or abstract threat,” said Tina Dura, the main author and assistant professor of the study in Virginia Tech’s geosciences.
“The likelihood of a large earthquake grows and climate change tightens the risks. We now have to take these compiled dangers into account in long -term planning.”
Earthquakes are now measured on the moment size, which represents a modern development of the judge scale, and records the amount of shake of the ground and the amount of seismic energy. The larger the number, the worse it is.
The largest earthquake that was ever recorded was 9.5 and competed in Chile in 1960, on a lining line in which the Pacific plate dives under the South American plate.
It dipped an entire pine forest and an agricultural farms, converted them into Tidal swamps and flooded the coastal cities, killed thousands and forced the residents to leave their houses.
It is unlikely that earthquakes will be much larger because there are no lines of fault on earth that is large enough to generate more strength. Some doubt that a quake of size ten could ever occur, and it would require a force 11 for real global devastation.
The earthquake that hit the Kamchatka peninsula was measured at 8.8 and is the largest that has occurred worldwide in 2011 since Tohoku’s earthquake in Japan.
It was powerful enough to send waves as quickly as commercial jets in the Pacific, and there were at least 50 aftershocks up to a force 6.9 that increased the climb.
Lisa McNeill, professor of tectonics at the University of Southampton, said: “Some rejection of movements do not move the sea floor much and there is no tsunami. In the event of this earthquake, it had a very large break and a panties that made the earthquake big, and so a tsunami was generated.
“The waves travel over the ocean – they are small at sea, but quickly and when they reach the flat water, they build up again.”
The earthquake occurred in a subduction zone in which two tectonic plates meet under the Kamchatka peninsula, a huge piece of land that protrudes from the northeastern top of Russia.
Here the Pacific plate moves in about three inches a year in an approximately three-inch direction and is forced under the Okhofotsk plate.
In the past, the area had large earthquakes, including a very large earthquake of 9.1 in 1952, not far from the new earthquake.
This earthquake was so powerful because it occurred at a depth of 12.8 miles, which is considered flat and made it possible to bring enormous amounts of energy into the water up and create tsunami waves.
Force 8 earthquakes fill energy that corresponds to 55 million tons of explosives.
In Kamchatka, tsunami waves were reported up to 10 to 13 feet, while four feet hit Hawaii, and a much smaller 12-inch increase in Hokkaido, Nordjapan, met a city. Waves were expected to meet the California coast around 9 a.m.
Dr. Stephen Hicks, Independent Research Fellow and Lecturer of Environmental Seismology at the UCL, said: “With such large earthquakes, long -term waves will travel all over the world for several days, with the planet still swinging and ringing with a large bell.”
However, it is unlikely that it is just as devastating as the Japanese disaster from 2011, in which 18,000 people were killed when an earthquake triggered strong tsunami waves of up to 133 feet, and cited a great nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Every year about twenty thousand earthquakes occur, but only a small percentage of them is classified as a high size.
