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Sunday 
13 April 2008
tectonic revelation
it’s been entirely too quiet on the natural disaster front here in the northwest.
we’re due for something unprecedented that no one could’ve predicted.
an earthquake isn’t exotic enough. it’s time for something really big…like, maybe, a new volcano.
Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area. More than 600 quakes have occurred over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.
it’s been, what, 28 years since mount st. helens popped her top? the loma prieta quake that shook san francisco during the BART world series was nearly 20 years ago. i was there for that one, and i still don’t drive the alaskan way viaduct without thinking “cypress structure.”
my wife drove that route often whe we lived in the bay area. as luck would have it, she was out of town that day, which meant she was more fortunate than many others. for me, the earthquake-anxiety dreams have long since stopped, but the memories have not.
what better time, then, for a previously unimagined manifestation from nature’s apocalyptic bag of tricks? something cataclysmically wrangellian. short of that, an offshore, explosive caldera, perhaps?
we live at the top of a hill. so we should be spared the tsunamis. unless the whole cascadia plate is put in play, in which case all bets are off. atlantis, anyone?
deep breath.
okay, so no one’s saying these little geologic anomalies are a precursor to anything. no one’s making any dire predictions, nor suggesting we divest ourselves of PNW real estate…while it’s still there.
still. the earthquakes are swarming the gates. this might be a good time to seek higher (not to mention firmer) ground.
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