Cascadia's Fault - Jerry Thompson [146]
The mountain of water lifted by more than eight hundred miles (1,300 km) of continental shelf suddenly heaving up has now collapsed under the force of gravity into a series of nine tsunami waves traveling east from the subduction zone toward North American shores and west across the Pacific at the speed of a jetliner. As predicted, the first swell of angry seawater hits the beach at Samoa, California, only eight minutes after the earthquake began. Those who survived the devastating temblor but forgot the tsunami drill—or those who simply didn’t hear the siren or couldn’t move fast enough—are killed almost instantly, battered and drowned as their wood-frame homes now disintegrate and are swept off their foundations.
Moments later the tsunami roars into Humboldt Bay, smashing the waterfronts of Eureka and Arcata. PG&E’s old nuclear reactor has been replaced by a conventional, fossil-fueled power generator. When cold seawater hits the boilers, they explode. Two minutes later Cascadia’s wave hits the boat harbor at Crescent City, demolishing everything that wasn’t already trashed by the earthquake.
Fifteen to twenty minutes later, the same scenario plays out again and again as wave after wave comes pounding across the sand, blasting like some massive, demonic fire hose through the streets of coastal towns like Newport, Cannon Beach, Seaside, and Astoria in Oregon; Ilwaco, Long Beach, and Grays Harbor in Washington; Ucluelet, Port Alberni, Tofino, and Victoria on Vancouver Island. And dozens of other towns and villages in between.
Nearly all the twisty, two-lane highways that connect the coastal communities to the outside world have been buried in several places by mountain rockslides and huge trees. Local fishing harbors, marinas, and docks have all been severely damaged. Only the handful of boats that happened to be at sea this rainy spring morning escape undamaged. Many others get crushed against their docks and capsized, or they drag anchor and grind against the rocks. People who have chosen to live on the edge of this ocean paradise are well and truly on their own now. It may be a week or more before outside help can get here.
The westbound tsunami waves, meanwhile, continue to hurtle across the Pacific, fanning out in wide arcs that will make landfall with sledgehammer force in hundreds more coastal villages, towns, and cities. Hour by hour as the waves get closer, alarms sound in more than a dozen languages and dialects. Hawaii, Midway Island, Alaska, and the Kamchatka Peninsula are among the first to be struck. Although physical damage is heavy, the loss of life and injuries are kept to a minimum because NOAA’s computer model has accurately predicted exactly how big the waves will be, which beaches will be hardest hit, and when the tsunami will arrive. The evacuations are largely successful.
Roughly nine hours after the quake, Cascadia’s first wave hits Japan’s eastern seaboard. Here most people have moved to higher ground in time. But the damage to waterfront homes and villages, and especially to high-tech container shipping docks, is extensive. Some of the busiest high-volume, high-value commercial shipping terminals in the world are dealt a severe blow and knocked out of business for who knows how long. Much of Japan’s export trade is essentially crippled.
The same thing happens again and again as Cascadia’s waves crash ashore in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. After that it’s onward to Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and the western shores of South America.The waves, like those generated off Sumatra in 2004, actually turn corners at the bottom of the planet. Eventually the tsunami dies, exhausted, in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and on the frigid shores of Antarctica.