Subtitle: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest

"No one in the past three hundred years has witnessed a Cascadia megaquake, Not a single soul in the past millennium has weathered a rupture on the Seattle Fault. But hundreds of thousands of people across the Northwest have stories to tell about the third type of earthquake that strikes the region: deep quakes like the one that struck between Olympia and Seattle in 2001"

Now that we're leaving Seattle I am letting to the forefront my earthquake fears, which have been bubbling subconsciously during the 30+ years we have lived here. This book will set no one's fears to rest. It is a history of the geologic and scientific discoveries of the last 30-40 years which have deepened our knowledge of past and potential earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest, otherwise known as the Cascadia subduction zone. There are explanations as to why future earthquakes in this area are likely to be much more powerful and have more dire consequences than quakes in any other part of the continental United States. While no one knows for sure, the consensus belief is that the Pacific Northwest is due or overdue for either a subduction quake or a fault quake, either of which would be devastating, rather than the more run of the mill deep quakes, which are the only kind that have occurred in recorded history here. There's also lots of information about tsunamis, and a discussion about the building code requirements that have been put into place for earthquake protection and whether they will in fact be effective should (or when) a megaquake occurs.

This book probably would appeal to a limited readership, but I found it informative and chilling.

3 stars ( )

This book was a thorough overview of the history, preparedness, and physics of the next major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. In this book, Doughton spends time getting into the details of various aspects surrounding seismology and geographically confined to the Pacific Northwest. What starts as an interesting premise quickly devolves into a book with no real direction overloaded with colloquialisms. Doughton writes this book for people, specifically homeowners who live in Seattle and ideally were here in the 2001 Nisqually quake. There is a lot of information that could be interesting to non-residents, but that is never the focus. I have never been to Japan but an overview of Fukushima pre- and post-tsunami could potentially be quite interesting. This book does contain some useful information however I would be prepared to skip large sections of this book unless you happen to live in Seattle. ( )

Well written exploration of earthquake science. The first 2/3 of book covers the science through time and how scientists have been able to determine when quakes have occurred in the past and what the future holds for the NW. The last 1/3 was less informative, but did bring home the need for preparing for the next Big One. ( )

This a book that everyone living in Cascadia should read. The author does an incredible job of explaining the fascinating geology of the Pacific Northwest and the unavoidable seismic hazards of the region. Its a non dramatized picture (yet still enjoyable to read) of what science really knows (and doesn't know) about the history of earthquakes and tsunamis in the region and of the underlying geophysics that has driven these events. Lots to learn from recent large quakes in Japan and Chile. The Pacific Northwest region is relatively unprepared at this point, but we can do much better if more people are made aware of the real risks and join together to make preperation a high priority for our government and society. ( )

A powerful Northwest earthquake is only a matter of time. That’s not quite news any more, but it is still a relatively recent development in the popular awareness of the region. The old perception that the Washington and Oregon were in a seismically quiet suburb of shaky California was dispatched barely a generation ago. It took slowly accumulated research to repaint the picture of our local geology. And the more studies that scientists published, the more calamitous the view of our region’s past — and future — appeared to become.

FullRip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest by Sandi Doughton (Sasquatch Books, 2013) looks at that past and that future. In text that is as readable as it is gripping, Doughton rolls out the hazardous story one topic at a time. She explains how isolated detective work among long-dead trees on Washington’s coast was combined with Native American stories of ground-shaking and flooding, then matched with archived accounts of Japanese tsunamis, and studies of undersea trench avalanches a hundred miles offshore. The big picture explanation for all of this was a giant no one previously knew: the 700-mile-long Cascadia Subduction Zone which will rip along its length and pack a prolonged punch that make California earthquakes seem like minor nuisances. Cascadia is not only capable of such devastating power; it has exercised it again and again.

Doughton goes beyond Cascadia, however, and shares insights on the rest of Washington’s underground hazards. She describes the newly discovered Cascadia quake of 1700 and the historic quakes of 1872, 1949, and 1965. They were all hints of what is likely to come. The emerging view of our landscape, with wrenching scars long-hidden by glaciation, erosion, and our rich Northwest vegetation, includes a complex network of faults — particularly the Seattle Fault — that could amplify the effects of future shaking. The 2001 Nisqually Earthquake was significant, for instance, not only for its immediate impact but for the science that emerged as it resonated across the region.

The craft of geological science is at the core of Doughton’s book. She doesn’t merely relay summaries cribbed from published scientific findings; she tells how the researchers discovered their evidence. Scientific fieldwork sometimes requires walking in coastal muck to sample ancient trees, or digging a trench in a residential neighborhood along the Seattle Fault, or noticing a thin line on a LIDAR map and traipsing through a forest to see it in real life. Those stories are weaved into the author’s narrative.

The book concludes with options for individual and community preparations before the next big one.

A 2011 book, Cascadia’s Fault by Jerry Thompson, documented the same subject. Both are excellent books that we enthusiastically recommend to Washington readers, but Doughton’s writing is perhaps the more approachable and engaging of the two.

[This review was written for WA-List.com, a Washington website. http://www.wa-list.com/?p=1802]