A look back at the 1700 Cascadia Fault earthquake

More than three centuries ago around this time, a devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck Vancouver Island at 9 p.m.

The “great tremor” that struck Vancouver Island on January 26, 1700 is well documented, although it happened 323 years earlier.

323 years ago tonight (9 PM on January 26, 1700) a M ~ 9 earthquake shook the West Coast from #Vancouver to Northern California, the Juan de Fuca plate slid as far as 20 meters, causing a large tsunami, strong shaking and landslides Ground https://t.co/l7nbpB7Q0G pic.twitter.com/4FJUeyFhzo

– John Cassidy (@earthquakeguy) January 26, 2023

Oral histories handed down by indigenous communities, tidal records kept by Japan and modern scientific research have allowed researchers to pinpoint not only the exact day the earthquake occurred, but even the hour it occurred.

According to several accounts of Nuu-Chah-nulth stories, he recounts a guest who was dancing, accidentally kicked one of their drums and was hit by an “earthquake foot”.

Another story from the Quileute tribe in modern-day Washington state tells of a battle between Thunderbird and Whale that uprooted trees and shook mountains.

Anthropologists from the University of Washington circulated some of these stories among scholars, and began to compare these stories, with one scholar in particular making a remarkable connection.

When an earthquake occurs, they often cause tsunamis. These powerful waves can spread all over the world.

“An earthquake in Alaska can produce tsunamis that spread across the Pacific Ocean, reaching the coasts of British Columbia, Japan, or even South America,” explained Michael Bostock, a professor of seismology at the University of British Columbia.

In the case of the Great Tremor of 1700, scholars have cross-checked the oral histories of indigenous peoples from North America with the extensive tidal records kept by the Japanese.

“Kenji Satake, the famous seismologist, realized that Japan had this extensive history of tides, and there might be a record of tsunamis there,” Bostock recounted.

Japanese records showed that a tsunami without shaking (indicating that it was not localized, as shaking only occurs near an earthquake) hit their shores, on January 27. Bostock showed that waves generated by such a displacement of water propagate across the ocean floor at roughly the same speed as a modern-day airplane.

“It makes it possible to correct the time of travel and see the exact moment it happened: 9pm PST.”

Another indicator that scientists use to date earthquakes includes marine sediment deposits from coastal marches and undersea landslides.

“Examinations of sediments in coastal swamps and residual sediments revealed that if you drill down you will find repetitions of different layers repeated and while digging in bogs we can determine what was likely to be tsunami sediment versus regular sediment,” Bostock said. Similar frequent deposits have been observed in ocean sediment cores.

Using various geological dating methods, scientists can examine the soil layers and reveal the cyclical nature of these “huge” earthquakes, similar to the ones that occurred in the year 1700, and estimate their average recurrence period to be about 550 years.

“This is the average time between events,” Bostock stressed. “The standard deviation is about 175 years which represents the variance. In some cases, there are 700-year intervals between megacorporations, and other times only 300 years.”

Every year, Vancouver Island slides westward about the width of a pencil, adding pressure to the huge fault. We can’t predict precisely when the next earthquake will strike with massive force, but Bostock advises against preparing too early for the possibility. As they say: it’s not about if, but when.

The British Columbia government has a comprehensive guide on how to prepare for an earthquake on its website.

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