it seemed like any other morning but on
February 28 2001 at 10:54 a.m. a tremor
began to shake Seattle
ladies get a minute
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 needed 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 RV 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 Puget 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 living here despite
their best efforts scientists can’t
offer a firm prediction when the next
earthquake will happen only the
certainty that it will
February 28 2001 at 10:54 a.m. a tremor
began to shake Seattle
ladies get a minute
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 needed 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 RV 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 Puget 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 living here despite
their best efforts scientists can’t
offer a firm prediction when the next
earthquake will happen only the
certainty that it will
Please follow and like us: