Canadian study confirms megathrust earthquake is due in Pacific NW

By JAKE ELLISON, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF




Digging into the soil at the Effingham Inlet in British Columbia, Canadian scientists have confirmed that a city-destroying megathrust earthquake in the Northwest is due.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone running the length of the coast from northern Vancouver Island down to California last slipped and shook the surface of the Earth 300 years ago, and that was just the latest of 22 such quakes in the past 11,000 years.

The scientists, whose work is published in the latest Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, used a new aging model for identifying and dating disturbed sedimentary layers in a core raised from the inlet.

The disturbances appear to have been caused by large and megathrust earthquakes that have occurred over the past 11,000 years, According to a science news site run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


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