As bad as it sounds for the coast, if/when the big one hits, a tsunami will be the least of the region's problems.
That's because a magnitude 9 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone is predicted to have effects well inland. E.g. most of Portland's bridges won't survive. The recently constructed Tilikum Crossing is up to modern earthquake standards, probably the new Sellwood Bridge, but the older bridges aren't. Those older bridges include all the interstate highway bridges.
How long can the Portland Metro area survive without electricity and without water and with much of the road infrastructure unusable because of damaged bridges?
A strong earthquake along the subduction zone can also affect the entire Washington Coast and Seattle. It could also affect Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.
Does anyone believe that FEMA could cope with a disaster like that? I don't. If and when the big one hits, a lot of people will be in for a lot of hurt.
This is generally known in the area. E.g. my daughter learned about it in a high school geology class. The high risk area is "anything west of I-5". But, as the article points out, the politicians have opted for Gollum's "I'm not listening" attitude.
It wouldn't be on FEMA at that point. You would have the nearest Carrier group and the Army/national guard moving in to provide support. And, as disappointing as this is to say, because you're an actual US state it would not be anything like how we treated Puerto Rico.
2 people died. From what I understand subduction zone earthquakes can be terrible, but it depends on the depth in the ocean at which they occur. If they are the right distance from shore and depth, devastating. But, further out and deep enough, they can often result in no tsunami. Does anyone know if that's supported by evidence?
I also keep seeing the author's quote about a 1 in 3 chance within 50 years that the big one hits. But in other places I've seen it say 5%. I'm a little confused by that number and what's correct.
It's scary either way. But, it does seem like the biggest death tolls occur where massive populations are spread near the coast, like in Indonesia.
In California is because our earthquakes come from strike/slip faults the largest earthquakes we can expect are around 8.0 like the 1906 earthquake. The Pacific Northwest has megathrust earthquakes that can reach 9.0 similar to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. That terrifies me because California isn't really prepared for what we're due. And the PNW is less prepared than California.
Well, everybody loves it when real estate increases in value, and gets turned over at a higher price, with or without first being "improved" by being built on. Notice that tends to ruin it for everyone else though. Wouldn't it be grand if that whole strip of coastal land were just public parks instead of retiree cottages.
"Who will buy a house in a neighborhood too dangerous for a police station?" he asked. "Who will start a business in an area where fire stations are not allowed?"
Cannon Beach is the “Goonies” beach, and it’s spectacular.
This type of regulation feels ominously similar to the choices made in areas like Paradise California, which burned last year. Too little respect for the urban-wildland interface.
It’s hard to truly appreciate the scale of natural events until you’re in the middle of one. Even a mild earthquake is a vivid reminder of the scale.
My dad's family lived in Cannon Beach when the tsunami of '64 hit. It innundated downtown, destroying some buildings, and tore others off their foundations. My dad was home when the house floated away...
If building tsunami-resistant buildings is too expensive, are there alternative options? E.g. mandate that everybody has easy access to an enormous ball of expanded polypropylene, with a hollow center and a tunnel big enough for entry. EPP is very tough and impact resistant, so it might save the occupant while it's floating in the tsunami. I don't know if it would actually work, but has anybody even studied this type of idea?
There's material design, shape and reinforcements to consider, but a tube would probably be a decent start. Requiring such a think, along with a alert system (loud sirens/speakers) in the region should probably also be a requirement.
```
forty-one subduction zone earthquakes on the Cascadia subduction zone in the past 10,000 years, suggesting a general average earthquake recurrence interval of only 243 years
```
With the last being in the year 1700 which puts the next firmly in the overdue with respect to average interval but not beyond the range of observed variance.
The average is surprisingly unimportant for rare event detection like this. The San Andreas fault, for instance, is overdue by that logic. But it could easily be decades away from another big one.
Coincidentally Wikipedia suggests the San Andreas daily erupted today?
I've lived in Cannon Beach, OR. And while I respect the quality of this Journalists work (she did win a Pulitzer), the perpetrated fear-mongering on this topic is disappointing.
Millions of people live on or near fault lines, yet we don't see calls to prevent building Fire/Police/Hospitals simply because "they would perish too."
The Oregon Coast is no exception. Those who live there, service personnel included, do so because they love the region, despite being reminded daily with all the "Tsunami Warning" signs up and down the PCH 101.
Isnt it a little different? The area threatened by tsunami maybe be less than a mile from the coast. If there's a nearby hill, less. It should not be a tremendous burden to keep your hospital a mile inland, or a hundred feet up the hill. Those who choose to live in the area can make a plan to briskly walk uphill when they feel tremors or hear sirens.
The area threatened by a major earthquake may extend for hundreds of miles and elevation is no defense. We have no choice but to locate public facilities in that area.
The fact of the matter is that people, despite knowing the tsunami risks, have decided to live in the tsunami-inundation zone. These people probably should also have fair access to public services. I know some writers in some media circles tend to think that government should be a heavy handed nanny. But even when people make a supposedly bad decision, like living on the Oregon coast, they are still tax paying citizens who deserve access to the services they pay for.
A lot of the inundation zone is fairly narrow, in many places the mountains get fairly close to the ocean. I would bet that in most areas it is possible to have public services within a reasonable distance while locating those services on ground that is high enough to be [relatively] safe.
Or they live in an area that has significant earthquake risk. You can argue about the relative odds of course but it seems as if the same logic could be applied to building in much of the Bay Area including SF.
The good news is that Oregon, according to the article, also gave up on its climate change bill. This means that many of those coastal buildings might already be under water by time a tsunami strikes, avoiding the problem.
>"Gave up" in this case consists of a certain party's legislative membership fleeing to Idaho to deny quorum.
Umm... no. They returned in time to continue the session. It didn't pass because there weren't enough Democrats who supported the bill.
>The move seemingly ended a fight that has strained relationships in the statehouse since the first days of the session. HB 2020 would create an overall cap on Oregon’s greenhouse gas emissions and would charge companies for their pollution.
>But the bill saw backlash from industries that felt added costs would put them at a competitive disadvantage, and from citizens who chafed at an expected increase in gas and energy costs. Ultimately the pushback was apparently enough to convince three Democratic senators to oppose the bill, meaning it would likely not have enough votes to pass.
Edit: Probably violating HN guidelines, but: I provided a reliable source, yet am being heavily downvoted without any counterpoint or counterreference. What's the issue with my comment?
Thanks for trying to give a helpful answer. BTW, when I said I may be violating guidelines, I was referring to:
>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Regarding "Umm... no", I suppose some people see it as snarky. I didn't intend for it to be that way, and at least in real world situations, people don't appreciate it if I start the conversation with "You're wrong!". The "umm... no" was meant as a way to lighten the effect of pointing out that someone was wrong.
Regarding the conversation veering into politics, I'd buy that argument if the parents were downvoted as well, which is clearly not the case. I'm not the one who brought politics into this thread.
At the same time, consider the very same guideline you pointed out:
>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Yet multiple comments beneath mine are accusing me of being both partisan and disingenuous. Not exactly thoughtful, and as of the time of me writing this comment, I am the only one providing actual sources/references. Who else is being "substantive" here?
As far as HN guidelines go, this is part of one of them:
>Assume good faith.
I find it hard to square comments accusing me of being disingenuous and partisan with that.
And obviously, there is:
>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.
At the end of the day, I'm more inclined to think that the evidence points more to HN readers of my comment as being partisan. I merely posted a fact and backed it up - it was not an opinion. And it certainly was not an accusation. And in a later comment, I even acknowledged the nuances - yes, the senators were possibly motivated by preventing quorum - not something. Despite stating that, I'm still accused of being disingenuous by omission. What am I omitting?
(Mostly replying to you as you actually tried to provide a helpful response, and if I respond to everyone individually, I'll hit the post limit very soon).
I hear you. It sounds like you are engaged in the conversation in good faith and are trying to understand why your communications are being downvoted while others are not.
I can't say for certain why your comments have been downvoted while others haven't, but I can make a conjecture.
Peter Drucker said "communication is perception." That has stuck with me.
Why might this matter here? If an initial comment you made rubbed anyone the wrong way, then the rest of your comments in this thread are likely to be perceived negatively.
This could be compounded by political preferences and group psychology.
Again, I'm just making a conjecture here as I didn't want to leave you hanging.
I drew on Drucker's thoughts on communications from his original 1973 publication of Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices. I uploaded the relevant pages to an Imgur album if you would like to read them.
Possibly a show of defiance and a political stunt intended to make their opponents look so unreasonable that camping out with extremist revolutionaries was a legitimate recourse.
It's the same reason threatening to shut down the government is becoming more common, it makes you look tough and uncompromising in the face of what your base considers to be evil.
>I don't get why they fled the state then. Don't even put it up for a vote?
It's not an either or. The bill may have been one of the motives to flee. The reality in the end, though, was that their tactic didn't defeat the bill. They came back before the end of the session. There was a quorum, but the Democrats realized they didn't have enough votes.
My point is that claiming there wasn't a quorum, given how productive the end of the session was[0], is simply false.
You're getting downvoted on both comments because you're being disingenuous and partisan. The GOP senators absolutely refused to return to Salem until they were positive the bill would not pass if they allowed quorum. They would have stayed away indefinitely if necessary.
Does not bode well for the future of our democracy. I guess we will see what the future holds.
Defensively upvoted BeetleB because the comment is literally and factually true and I see nothing disingenuous or partisan about it, nor would I venture into such intent-divining, mind-reading territory. You're correct about the intent of the Republican embargo, but your point is about what would have happened. BeetleB's comment is about what did happen. If we're all champions of rational discussion on HN then surely there's room for that much subtlety, not to mention plain facts. Not enough Democrats supported the bill; they declared it dead; Republicans decided in light of that, they could stop their stonewalling (and in my opinion, dereliction of duty). It's a technicality, and it's technically true.
Hell, if we are interested in being absolutely, technically correct, the GOP senators stated bluntly that they would never return so long as the bill might pass, and one of them dared the state police to try and find him, implying he would fire upon them if they showed up.
We have no way of knowing if the bill had enough votes to pass because the GOP senators never permitted it to come up for a vote. Anything beyond that is speculation.
BeetleB is being disingenuous, the GOP fled and would not return until they were sure the bill died. There were other things that needed voting on- the climate bill was publicly dropped so that the missing senators would come back and they could vote on other issues. Putting the blame for this bill failing to pass on anyone but these senators is disingenuous by omission.
It's all part of the story. Talking about the Niña doesn't mean I absolve the Pinta and the Santa María from whatever Columbus' expedition did. It does probably mean I'm talking about the Niña at the moment and am not terribly interested in the blame game. (No one else wants a time-out from that tedium huh?)
OK well if we're going to play the blame game, and we don't like disingenuously omitting things, then why shield from blame those 3 Democrats who switched sides? Why shield from blame the leadership who could've stayed the course, maybe found a way to wait the Republicans out forever? (It's not like "rules" or "procedures" apply anymore, so why not?)
You never know, someone you claim is a Republican partisan could just be the most disappointed liberal you ever saw, fed up with how weak and ineffectual their supposed representatives in various bodies are, even despite having majorities in those bodies. Am I automatically a Republican for saying something like "Obama isn't liberal enough?" Of course not. And those who claim that criticism of the leadership is disloyal/traitorous share that trait with fascists.
>You never know, someone you claim is a Republican partisan could just be the most disappointed liberal you ever saw, fed up with how weak and ineffectual their supposed representatives in various bodies are, even despite having majorities in those bodies.
Or, you know, just someone who values the truth. :-)
There doesn't have to be a complex narrative behind my actions, and nor do I have to be on either the Democrats or the Republican's side to point out when a statement is false.
>The good news is that Oregon, according to the article, also gave up on its climate change bill.
Here is the next:
>"Gave up" in this case consists of a certain party's legislative membership fleeing to Idaho to deny quorum.
And then came mine:
>Umm... no. They returned in time to continue the session. It didn't pass because there weren't enough Democrats who supported the bill.
And then eventually you ask me:
>If you value the truth why did you exclude so much of it?
The first two comments were clearly omitting an important fact, so I contributed to the conversation by providing excluded truths. Furthermore, my comment implicitly acknowledged that the senators ran away to prevent a quorum, by acknowledging that they returned. In case there was any doubt, I made that explicit in my next comment.
Not to mention that my (initial) comment contained more information, and actually provided a source. And in all these comments criticizing mine, no one else has even bothered to provide a source to support their claims.
So what did I exclude, and why am I the one being asked? Why not hold the original commenters to the same standard?
As I said, at the end of the legislative session:
1. There was quorum.
2. No one was stalling the bill at that point.
3. The Democrats chose not to have a vote on the bill because of actions by their own party members. Whatever tactics the Republicans initially used to stall the bill, at the end the Democrats contributed to the failure in getting the bill passed.
(For anyone still reading, and confused about my original comments - their scores were well into the negatives, although they no longer are so.)
Can you share where the fact that Democrats didn't support it is documented? I'm open to hearing this is the truth, and I'm also wanting to disprove my assumption this is a Republican talking point. I will definitely read what you provide.
At 60M tons (and steady) of a worldwide 10,000M tons (and sharply increasing) of carbon emissions per year, those buildings’ underwater status is unlikely to be affected by Oregon’s carbon bill.
You must walk before you can run. An Oregon carbon tax could serve as a model to others, and help inch us toward international consensus. It's a coordination problem; signalling serves an important role.
Indeed. I love the symmetry of state/national legislation skepticism (pointless, all large jurisdictions need to coordinate) and consumer behavior skepticism (pointless, need to vote for legislators who will pass laws impacting all consumers). It's a dynamic problem; most likely any one individual jurisdiction's or person's particular decision isn't going to change global outcomes, but it's hard to see how to get on a better global path without lots of decisions aiming for that at every level.
A carbon tax would indeed have been great, but unfortunately what was proposed was cap-and-trade and a bunch of "green jobs" pork. Better than nothing, possibly, but even so as likely to affect the international consensus as a zero-emission Oregon to affect the global temperature.
Your inflammatory rhetoric is completely unwarranted. Terrorism is "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes", per dictionary.com. This isn't that. This is more pretending that there is nothing to be afraid of for economic reasons. That is, it is something almost totally unlike terrorism, even if it eventually results in a large number of deaths.
That said, greed and incompetence can be just as deadly as malice. And that's what this is - legislative greed and/or incompetence. It would be lovely to get rid of politicians for that. Unfortunately, you'd have to get rid of almost all of them...
There is something for people outside Oregon to do. Google Maps and hotel booking sites could delist hotels in the inundation zone. (Or at least put a big warning.)
Perhaps downvoters could explain why they don't care about keeping tourists safe? This might seem mean, but it's the logical consequence of taking this threat seriously.
Maybe it’s google maps taking moral stances. There will be a lot of people who’d like google maps to delist or rename things to suit an agenda, well intentioned or otherwise so it’s probably best if google stay out of it.
That's because a magnitude 9 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone is predicted to have effects well inland. E.g. most of Portland's bridges won't survive. The recently constructed Tilikum Crossing is up to modern earthquake standards, probably the new Sellwood Bridge, but the older bridges aren't. Those older bridges include all the interstate highway bridges.
How long can the Portland Metro area survive without electricity and without water and with much of the road infrastructure unusable because of damaged bridges?
A strong earthquake along the subduction zone can also affect the entire Washington Coast and Seattle. It could also affect Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.
Does anyone believe that FEMA could cope with a disaster like that? I don't. If and when the big one hits, a lot of people will be in for a lot of hurt.
This is generally known in the area. E.g. my daughter learned about it in a high school geology class. The high risk area is "anything west of I-5". But, as the article points out, the politicians have opted for Gollum's "I'm not listening" attitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone