Cascadia Quake Potentially More Damaging than San Andreas or Japan’s Tōhoku

In “Quake catastrophe like Japan's could hit Pacific Northwest, new data show” M. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com also reports on last month’s reports at the American Association for the Advancement of Science – noting that the Cascadia quake has numerous parallels with Japan’s Tōhoku disaster one year ago.

At that conference, the University of Nevada-Reno’s John Anderson, said that the Cascadia fault line poses the greater threat of unleashing a killer mega-quake than the San Andreas fault running through California. Based on analysis of last year’s quake, researchers say a Cascadia event, if deep, could result in more damaging shacking than what happened in Japan.

According to the msnbc story,

The warnings come as the White House is proposing a 2013 budget that would cut $4.6 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's tsunami programs. Much of that would come from the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, which funds evacuation maps, training and education efforts — important services given how deeply the Japanese quake and tsunami transformed the science of seismology.

In another MSNBC story, California’s Earthquake Early Warning network or ShakeAlert – once refined - could provide maybe 30 seconds advance warning of a quake, but funding for the $80 million required for the southern system is very uncertain – much less the $70 million for a northwest early warning earthquake network.