A tsunami can kill thousands. Can they build an escape?

Houses on the edge of one of the many canals at sea level in Ocean Shores, Washington, January 25, 2022. (Grant Hindsley/The New York Times)

Ocean Shores, Washington – 350 children at Ocean Shores Elementary School trained in earthquake survival plans, descending under desks to beat spasms, and then raced upstairs to the second floor to await the next tsunami.

Unless something changes, their preparations are likely to be futile.

Scientists say the Cascadia Fault off the Pacific Northwest Coast is primed for a massive 9-magnitude earthquake at some point, a fault that would push a wall of water across most of the northwest coast in a matter of minutes. Low-lying coastal neighborhoods in Washington, Oregon and northern California will be under 10 feet or more of water, with Ocean Shores Elementary School facing inundation that may be up to 23 feet deep.

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The second-floor shelter that students rush to in their rehearsals is located 13 feet off the ground — in a building not built to withstand the tsunami waves.

“The truth of the matter is that if there was a tsunami tomorrow, we would lose all of our children,” said Andrew Kelly, director of the North Beach School District, which includes Ocean Shores. Kelly is one of a growing number of officials who are calling for a network of tall buildings and platforms along the northwest coast that could provide sanctuary for thousands of people who might otherwise be doomed in the event of a tsunami.

On Tuesday, voters in Ocean Shores and nearby communities will decide whether to approve a bond measure that would, in part, build new vertical additions at two schools, providing students and nearby residents with a place to escape ocean heights.

Scientists have been warning for years that another catastrophic earthquake could erupt at any time in the Cascadia subduction zone, a 600-mile “giant crust” fault that stretches from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, to Cape Mendocino, California.

An earthquake about 70 miles offshore can cause land along the shore to subside instantly by several feet. The sudden movement under the sea will send huge waves towards the shore. And while recent tsunamis caused by earthquakes and volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean triggered slight surges in the US West Coast hours later, the Cascadia wave will hit shores within 15 minutes.

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Along many areas of the Northwest Coast, there are no bluffs or tall buildings to climb – nowhere to go.

The lack of evacuation options means the death toll may be nearly incomprehensible, far outstripping any other natural disaster in US history. In Washington State, according to the 9.0 scenario the state uses for its estimates, about 70,000 people will likely be within the lowlands that could be inundated by large tsunamis, and 32,000 of them will not have high ground nearby to escape to within 15 years. Minutes.

Depending on the season and time of day, Oregon estimates that 5,000 to 20,000 could die along the coast in a similar event, largely due to a lack of escape options; The state has planned for a more deadly earthquake that, based on the geological record, could cause a tsunami as high as 100 feet in some places. Additional deaths are expected in northern California, particularly in Crescent City, where a tsunami from Alaska killed 11 people in 1964.

Scientists say the question is not if, but when. According to the research, the probability of a 9.0 mega earthquake occurring on the Cascadia Fault in the next 50 years is about 1 in 9; The odds of a smaller but still powerful earthquake—with a magnitude greater than 7.0—are 1 in 3. Pressure continues to build along hundreds of miles as the Juan de Fuca plate thrusts down the North American plate.

“Every day, on average, they are pushed together at roughly the rate of nail growth,” said Corina Allen, chief risk geologist in Washington. “Every year that an earthquake does not happen, there is a greater chance that it will occur in the next year.”

Over the years, officials have put up signs for evacuation routes and drawn routes to move people to higher ground. But many societies remain painfully weak.

In the Long Beach area of ​​Washington, for example, there are several communities — home to thousands — along a narrow, flat peninsula that stretches for more than 20 miles. Officials in recent years had considered building an artificial mound to help evacuate the tsunami but abandoned the idea when modeling showed it needed to be much higher than was possible.

Perhaps no place is more vulnerable than Ocean Shores, a community of 6,700 residents, with thousands more visiting in the summer to enjoy miles of pristine beach next to the surf. The town has quite a bit of elevation, and the tsunami that could accompany the 9.0 rupture would sweep through it all.

People can try to get out, but officials expect the roads to be crooked, inundated or covered with power lines, trees and debris. The expected subduction will cause the entire area to suddenly sink up to 7 feet; Vibration may cause sandy soil to liquefy before the tsunami reaches shore.

People can try to run to higher ground outside of town, but Ocean Shores sits on a 6-mile peninsula. Those who live at the southern end will be about 8 miles from higher ground. Depending on their location, residents may only have 10 minutes before a wave begins to wash them away.

“In 10 minutes, there’s not much time for us to go very far,” Allen said.

The best option might be to climb on a roof or climb a tree. But many of the area’s buildings weren’t built to withstand such an earthquake, let alone a tsunami, which would smash cars, trees, and other debris.

Dozens of other waterfront communities are also at risk, the researchers said, including Seaside, Gearhart and Tellamook in Oregon. Crescent City and the Samoa Peninsula, near Eureka in California; and areas up and down the Washington coast.

To improve chances of survival, officials in Washington have proposed a network of 58 vertical evacuation buildings along the outer coast. It could give 22,000 people the option to escape, though thousands more would still be out of range.

Each structure can cost around $3 million.

Vertical evacuation structures have been adopted in Japan for years, in the form of platforms, towers, and artificial berms. They became a haven for many in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, although the event still killed more than 19,000 people.

In the Pacific Northwest, only two vertical evacuation buildings have so far been built. One is the Oregon State University building in Newport. The other is part of Ocosta Elementary School in Washington. Other cities have considered evacuation towers, but haven’t yet built them, including Seaside, Oregon, which has moved its middle and high school to the hills east of the city.

In Tuckland, Washington, Shoalwater Bay Tribe chief Charlene Nelson said the tribe has been working on escape strategies for nearly 18 years. Their first refuge was a building in the hills designed as an evacuation center with supplies.

They’ve run training events to get people to higher ground, but one of the many families living on a narrow strip of land overlooking Willapa Bay found it took a 56-minute walk to get to the center. The wave is likely to arrive in 20 minutes.

The tribe recently built a tower, heavily funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where the burials are 51 feet high in the ground and two raised platforms that can accommodate hundreds of people.

Even when the structure is complete, Nelson said, people will need to practice their escape plans and learn possible safety routes. They need a bag ready to go with essential supplies – but not so much that it will slow them down when running for their lives. There will be no time to hesitate or to know which direction to go.

Regardless of any damage a tsunami might cause, the earthquake itself would cause widespread devastation, with crumbling buildings, collapsing bridges, power disturbances, and mass losses across an area of ​​140,000 square miles, including Seattle and Portland.

Scientists said the last major earthquake in the Cascadia Fault occurred on January 26, 1700. Geological evidence from the past 10,000 years suggests that massive earthquakes of about 9.0 occur on the fault at a rate of every 430 years, said Chris Goldfinger, a researcher at Oregon State University. general. When smaller but still powerful earthquakes are included on parts of the fault, the timeline in some areas shrinks to every 250 years.

322 years have passed.

Reducing expected casualty figures is difficult when response planning is left largely to each community, Goldfinger said. A comprehensive federal solution accompanied by funding is needed, he said, and there is little time to delay given the amount of work required to prepare.

“You would underestimate the scale of any catastrophe we have ever experienced,” Goldfinger said. “We know it’s coming.”

Correction: February 7, 2022

An earlier version of this article misspelled the year of the Alaska earthquake that led to the tsunami deaths in California. That was 1964, not 1962.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

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