Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest

I'll admit that I didn't think much of this book when it was sitting around the house. The cover made it look like a poorly written self-published alarmist book. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a well-written book. The author is a journalist living in the Pacific Northwest. She has the journalistic flair for making a complex subject east to understand. I had started reading this paperback. I then found the e-book at the library. After many false starts, I found that using the Alexa app, I was able to get this Kindle book read to me. The voice was fairly clear with a decent pace, but there did not seem to be a way to get it to go faster.

The book is primarily a chronological unfolding of our understanding of earthquakes in the northwest. There were not many people keeping records in the area when early earthquakes occured. However, there are some oral histories and legends from the Native Americans in the regions. Some later earthquakes had some documentation that could teased out by early settlers. However, for most of the early earthquakes, most knowledge has been found by analyzing the land. Soil cores can identify anomalies that correlate with earthquakes. Tree rings can help to provide more precise dating. Carbon dating can help provide details from older quakes. Identifiers of larger quakes can also be correlated with detailed tsunami data that has been kept by Japan. Lidar data can also be used to attempt to find fault lines and other anomalies that may be difficult to identify. 

Earthquake prediction has been a total failure so far. Even trying to identify the susceptibility of different areas to earthquakes can be challenging. Japan has one of the most advanced level of earthquake preparedness, and even they were caught off guard. In the Northwest, many older brick buildings would likely crumble in large earthquake. The Space Needle had been over-engineered and may be fine. Many wood framed houses may do well, while "tilt up" warehouses will likely fail. Of greater concern will be infrastructure. Pipes and powerlines may fail. It could take a long time before infrastructure can be repaired. Even if buildings survive there may be internal damage and it could take months before the normal life is started again. It is important to be prepared to survive on your own for at least a few days before any help would be available.