It was magnitude 9.2, the second largest in recorded history.
The photos she brought back were quite something. I may still have them somewhere, but in the meantime there are plenty online. LIFE.com has a remarkable collection:
https://www.life.com/history/the-great-alaska-earthquake-of-...
https://ready.alaska.gov/_64Quake/History
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/alaska1964/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Alaska_earthquake
From Wikipedia:
> As a result of the earthquake, 131 people are believed to have died: Nine died as a result of the earthquake itself and another 122 died from the subsequent tsunamis all over the world. Five died from the tsunami in Oregon, and 12 died from the tsunami in Crescent City, California.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/anchoragemunici...
I'll admit that FEMA isn't exactly cited in a way that's possible to corroborate, but presumably they're estimating a worst-case scenario and not a median- or average-case scenario. That might explain some of the large divorce in figures.
There will be lots of damage in Portland. There are lots of unreinforced masonry that will collapse and kill occupants. Most of the bridges, big and small won’t survive cutting off from outside. Infrastructure will be destroyed and utilities will be out of months. All of those could be upgraded which is why Bay Area would be in better shape.
Also, this is talking about Portland and Seattle. Most of the destruction will be on the coast which is closer to the fault. The tsunami will cause lots of damage, destroying most of the towns and killi;g everyone that doesn’t evacuate to high ground.
The 2011 Japan quake is the best comparison but Portland/Seattle aren’t prepared like Tokyo, and there are minimal tsunami defenses.
By contrast, the San Andreas fault literally runs through the middle of the Bay Area.
The Cascadia quake is 100x as big. I'm at 1/3 the distance from the San Andreas fault. Guess who gets the larger earthquake?
Add to that the fact that I grew up in Victoria. All of Vancouver Island is a subduction zone during a Cascadia earthquake. Sadly, that means that a good chunk of what I knew growing up winds up under water. Seattle may fare better, but my home town does not.
Unless you were referring the tsunami risk, which is my big fear as a fellow Victorian.
Reading up now, it looks like it is 1-2 meters, mostly on the west coast of the island. But my memory of the early research when I still lived there in the early 1990s was that it was about a 3 meter drop. Between how low much of Victoria is, widespread poorly build older houses, and lots of housing built on unstable landfill in places like James Bay, my belief was that it was going to be pretty devastating to a lot of parts that I knew.
However recent articles like https://www.mdpi.com/2624-795X/4/3/13 suggest a much milder risk than I had thought.
>"Will part of Vancouver Island "break off and sink," or "split in two at Alberni Inlet?" No. In a big earthquake the seafloor offshore from Vancouver Island will be uplifted and the area along the coast will sink, but at worst that sinking will only be a few meters. If you live very close to the beach and close to sea level then there is a possibility that your house will be flooded, but no big piece of the island is going to break off and disappear. It is possible that there will be submarine landslides along the steepest slopes offshore, but each of those is likely only be small in extent.
That said, https://www.esquimalt.ca/sites/default/files/greater_victori... is built on more up to date information than I had. And suggests that subsidence + tsunami is only 4 meters. Which doesn't pose a serious threat. (If they are wrong and get a 10 meter combination, of course, that would be a far, far worse story.)
Looking at my geological units map of Washington, Seattle is surrounded by a lot of faults, much like parts of Southern California. Some of those much, MUCH closer than 150 miles, and devastating if they go. I can see one going from Port Angeles, crossing the 101, and going into Port Gamble. It likely continues to run either directly under Seattle or just south of it, in fact that might be the continuation of that reverse thrust fault dead south of Seattle which is shown in the map for the story article. If that one goes, Seattle's not having a good time.
But remember, the bay area is also home to many, many faults, and we don't even know the locations of them all. For instance, the next big bay area quake is likely to come from the Hayward Fault in the E. Bay.
Sf gets its water from Hetch Hetche, clean hydro power too.
SF is a very different place in a lot of ways from the rest of California, and the US in general.
https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/h....
When the global average temperature rises some places will get cooler from time to time, there are multiple underdamped systems at play.
I never remember having heat waves in October or February. We also never needed AC, although maybe I'm just growing soft in my old age.
"Indian Summer" meant things might get a bit warm in September, then cool down. Weather stayed cool until the spring.
This summer has been oddly cool (at least in Berkeley), but got up to 92 2 weeks ago, which is not normal.
However, the Seattle region is one, and it already has a pleasant temperate climate. IIRC, the main expected change is that it will get more sun in the winter months, which would address the main criticism of Seattle’s weather.
Of course, these models could be wildly off, but to the extent we have such models Seattle is in an enviable position. While there are some regions that look like they will change for the better e.g. some arid regions will get substantially more rain, it is hard to predict the true impact of that change on those regions — that outcome might come with significant trade offs.
Survival in some of the worst case climate change scenarios involves moving away from the equator where crop failure and extreme heat will occur.
It involves having good access to water, and ideally farmland as wars over resources and refugee migration accelerate.
Martial law of some kind would become a normalized thing in population centers as basic resources and commodities become more expensive. Seattle has a large military presence.
Seattle is positioned geographical well for these things. Being farther north alone is a huge benefit. The mountains of the west due to their proximity to the Pacific enable much more temperate climates than other port cities.
I knew a lot of, frankly over-confident people who moved to New England because the news told them it was good for Climate Change. I think the “experts” know a lot less about Climate Change impacts to weather than they want to admit.
Just about a month ago the city next door to me in MA got a freak foot of rain which caused some serious flooding. I had to pump water out of my basement for the first time in years.
Very few places are immune to at least local natural disasters of various types and some of those, like the Vegas area have their own long-term issues.
I’ve been wanting to actually talk about actually solving the problem for decades. But get no takers.
And here, we’re even attacking people just trying to avoid getting run over by the steamroller we insist on not stopping.
It’s crazy.
I posted an Ask HN looking for feedback on where to start trying to do the math and did not really get satisfactory replies. I am wondering if "the industrial revolution" is not really the primary cause of human caused climate change but perhaps largely coincidental. The math needs to get done to meaningfully examine that question.
I'm always wondering how one would foster substantial global wetlands restoration.
I wouldn’t discount measurable increases in global atmospheric co2 either way. And continuing to pump gigatons/yr of ‘new’ co2 into the atmosphere is so unlikely to help the situation, that I’d hesitate to try to downplay it.
The issue with wetlands and forests in this math is that both, generally, are like ‘capacitors’ - except in rare cases, their storage is temporary. It doesn’t (and can’t, if you do the math on volume of space available!) store large quantities of carbon permanently on a geological timeframe. Unless said wetland or forest gets subducted or buried anyway before it rots. If that’s happened though, it drying up isn’t likely to reverse that sequestration.
OPEC currently estimates approximately 70 million barrels of oil are extracted each year (coal far more I believe by volume). Each barrel is 42 gallons. That is just a hair under 3 billion gallons of oil alone. Or 11.3 million cubic meters of oil, per year. Nothing in comparison to the large rivers of the world, but enough to drown most any large city.
It would take a lot of lost wetland by volume to make up for that, especially when you look at cumulative effects over time. Even if the wetlands were pure carbon by volume (hydrocarbons aren’t, but are quite close for a dense liquid!), it isn’t clear there even is or has been that much wetland. That may give you a start though, for the math.
I'm looking for ways to run the numbers to validate a hypothesis that this is a really major factor and also beginning to research mitigation.
But I'm only one person. If I have to figure everything out with no help, this goes nowhere fast.
I added some math to my comment, hopefully it helps.
One way to estimate might be a simplistic, volume/density one. How much carbon is there in the applicable geography/land column? In a forest, it would be the trees themselves (above ground) + the soil. In a wetland, the vegetation + mud/sediment.
There should studies with core samples + samples of vegetation that can give good estimates. Then extrapolate. And you’ll have at least a rough estimate of the potential upper and lower bounds, assuming all that carbon instantly turned atmospheric (or at some assumed rate).
Combine that with numbers like I gave above (I’d do some googling for Coal numbers and add that too), and you should be able to estimate the maximum relative contribution of each source. We’re burning Coal in the billions of tons/yr quantities, and each short ton of coal produces well over a ton of co2 - so that is billions of tons/yr of co2 on its own.
From my profile:
Peatlands cover just 3 percent of the planet’s surface but they store about 30 percent of all land-based carbon, or twice as much as all of the world’s forests combined. Coastal wetlands remove atmospheric CO2 up to fifty-five times faster than rain forests.
I'm not downplaying anything. I'm just seeing data that suggests wetlands loss is a really big deal.
What makes you think a big one ("The Big One") isn't going to hit the Bay Area?
But from what I recall reading, the big one that hits Seattle will exceed the big one that hits the Bay. Seattle's big ones are higher magnitude but less frequent. Iirc it's also likely the 9.0 that hits Seattle won't be in most of our lifetimes. The last really big one was before Europeans arrived.
10x the ground movement amplitude — 32x the total energy release, though!