There’s a fault line that should strike greater fear in your heart than the San Andreas or the Hayward. The Cascadia Subduction Zone runs off the U.S. West Coast from Cape Mendocino in California north to Vancouver Island in Canada. The 700-mile fault zone has the potential to unleash such an enormous earthquake and tsunami that, in the words of one expert, “everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz joins us to outline what’s at stake. Her article “The Really Big One” appears in the magazine’s latest issue. We’ll also hear from a Bay Area seismologist about the fault’s implications for California.
'The Really Big One' That Will Hit the Pacific Northwest
(Tony Webster/Flickr)
Guests:
Kathryn Schulz, staff writer for The New Yorker
Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley
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