it seemed like any other morning but on
February 28 2001 at 10:54 a.m. a tremor
began to shake Seattle
ladies and gentlemen
all right fortunately when it was over
there was just one death indirectly
attributed to the quake only a few were
seriously injured the city itself
escaped major destruction scientists
know that the 2001 earthquake was caused
by a rupture in the Earth’s crust but
there’s another more dangerous fault
line running right beneath the city
streets we have a big fault that runs
right underneath downtown Seattle and we
know it’s there and we know it’s active
the giant masses of rock that meet at
the fault are unstable they’re prone to
sudden and violent shifts that cause
earthquakes to help the city prepare for
the inevitable scientists want to know
more so in 1998 they began an ambitious
project to literally test the ground
underneath the city and estimate how it
would shake in a real earthquake we
towed behind the RB Thompson our
research vessel at the University of
Washington an array of what we call air
guns sending out a sound source pinging
letting it bounce down and come back up
the scientists shot off strong sound
waves into the waters of the Puget Sound
adjoining Seattle
using ground motion detectors called
seismometers to gauge the effects by
measuring how the waves move through
Seattle’s earth the scientists developed
a picture of what Seattle looks like
below ground so as the sound waves go
down and it hits a different density of
rock we can kind of model what the rocks
are like beneath the surface Seattle is
sitting on top of a bowl of loose
sediment the type of ground that would
actually amplify earthquakes the
scenario itself is pretty grim if if you
were to have a large earthquake on the
Seattle fault for example the first
thing would be probably widespread
destruction just from the earthquake
itself and because the fault runs below
the Puget Sound it could also create the
large destructive tidal waves known as
tsunamis I know that an earthquake in a
tsunami is going to happen here in Fugit
Sound it could happen tomorrow it may
not happen for a thousand years given
that I add up the risks of living here
versus the benefits of living here and I
like living here a lot so I make a
decision to continue it in here despite
their best efforts scientists can’t
offer a firm prediction when the next
earthquake will happen only the
certainty that it will
Oh
you
February 28 2001 at 10:54 a.m. a tremor
began to shake Seattle
ladies and gentlemen
all right fortunately when it was over
there was just one death indirectly
attributed to the quake only a few were
seriously injured the city itself
escaped major destruction scientists
know that the 2001 earthquake was caused
by a rupture in the Earth’s crust but
there’s another more dangerous fault
line running right beneath the city
streets we have a big fault that runs
right underneath downtown Seattle and we
know it’s there and we know it’s active
the giant masses of rock that meet at
the fault are unstable they’re prone to
sudden and violent shifts that cause
earthquakes to help the city prepare for
the inevitable scientists want to know
more so in 1998 they began an ambitious
project to literally test the ground
underneath the city and estimate how it
would shake in a real earthquake we
towed behind the RB Thompson our
research vessel at the University of
Washington an array of what we call air
guns sending out a sound source pinging
letting it bounce down and come back up
the scientists shot off strong sound
waves into the waters of the Puget Sound
adjoining Seattle
using ground motion detectors called
seismometers to gauge the effects by
measuring how the waves move through
Seattle’s earth the scientists developed
a picture of what Seattle looks like
below ground so as the sound waves go
down and it hits a different density of
rock we can kind of model what the rocks
are like beneath the surface Seattle is
sitting on top of a bowl of loose
sediment the type of ground that would
actually amplify earthquakes the
scenario itself is pretty grim if if you
were to have a large earthquake on the
Seattle fault for example the first
thing would be probably widespread
destruction just from the earthquake
itself and because the fault runs below
the Puget Sound it could also create the
large destructive tidal waves known as
tsunamis I know that an earthquake in a
tsunami is going to happen here in Fugit
Sound it could happen tomorrow it may
not happen for a thousand years given
that I add up the risks of living here
versus the benefits of living here and I
like living here a lot so I make a
decision to continue it in here despite
their best efforts scientists can’t
offer a firm prediction when the next
earthquake will happen only the
certainty that it will
Oh
you
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