# Earthquakes.



## Notsoyoung (Dec 2, 2013)

For the past week or so there seems to be another earthquake somewhere in one of the Western States. It might be a good idea to store some of those extra items you might need. 

Don't panic, but maybe think about it.


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## AquaHull (Jun 10, 2012)

It's just the beginning of sorrows.


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

Notsoyoung said:


> For the past week or so there seems to be another earthquake somewhere in one of the Western States. It might be a good idea to store some of those extra items you might need.
> 
> Don't panic, but maybe think about it.


For me personally (as a geologist), the scariest earthquake to happen in quite some time was the 4.8 magnitude Yellowstone temblor that happened early Sunday morning. There were several aftershocks measuring greater than 3.0 on the Richter scale, as well. I know a couple geologists with the University of Utah team that monitors the caldera, and they are definitely taking the quake seriously. Earthquakes by themselves are spooky in Yellowstone, but, when you combine them with the recent deformation in parts of the park, and the situation definitely merits concern.

Though the caldera is technically "overdue" for another massive eruption (this really only means that it has been longer since the last major eruption than the periods between other major eruptions), it is still statistically very unlikely to erupt during any of our lifetimes.

That said, if Yellowstone were to experience a true earthquake swarm, or what volcanologist call a "long period event", I would be heading south with my family as quickly as my vehicle would take me. A large scale eruption of the Yellowstone Super Volcano would literally be the end of the world for most people living in the western United States, and those living downwind of the eruption.


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

The only difference your location will make when Yellowstone erupts is the length of time it will take to hit you. If a full eruption does happen it will spew enough ash to cover Montana to Maine in six feet of ash, Put enough ash into the sky to cause a nuclear winter for several years and there won't be a place on earth left untouched.

Will it kill off mankind? No, but it will make a dent in the world's population. I plan to have ash drop on me up to a year after the event if the standard westerly flow of the atmosphere is in place when it goes off. There will be little travel following the eruption because the ash will ruin most any kind of engine the breathes it in. If it uses turbines, diesel or gas engines it will last about 15 minutes without a dust separator and less than an hour with a separator.


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## MrsInor (Apr 15, 2013)

Paul - just full of uplifting news today.


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

Well, looking at the time frame for the last three eruptions and their size I would venture to say that if we have an eruption in our lifetime it will be a relatively small event. The longer between the one that was 100000 years ago and the next one the size of the event would increase. If it took a couple of million years then it might be an extinction event but as long as it doesn't go for more than 250000 years it should be a minor event that would effect the area NW to SW of the volcano out a couple of thousand miles. Most of the world would not be hard hit except for one long winter (a year without a summer).

Is that better?


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## James m (Mar 11, 2014)

I was in hilo when Kilauea erupted in 1984. I was two but I was there! The ash came down on the town and I got sick. I still blame some of my medical problems on this (lungs and heavy breathing when running long distances)
It took out kalapana gardens if you remember. I was back later and its now a national park.


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## Inor (Mar 22, 2013)

Charles Martel said:


> For me personally (as a geologist), the scariest earthquake to happen in quite some time was the 4.8 magnitude Yellowstone temblor that happened early Sunday morning. There were several aftershocks measuring greater than 3.0 on the Richter scale, as well. I know a couple geologists with the University of Utah team that monitors the caldera, and they are definitely taking the quake seriously. Earthquakes by themselves are spooky in Yellowstone, but, when you combine them with the recent deformation in parts of the park, and the situation definitely merits concern.
> 
> Though the caldera is technically "overdue" for another massive eruption (this really only means that it has been longer since the last major eruption than the periods between other major eruptions), it is still statistically very unlikely to erupt during any of our lifetimes.
> 
> That said, if Yellowstone were to experience a true earthquake swarm, or what volcanologist call a "long period event", I would be heading south with my family as quickly as my vehicle would take me. A large scale eruption of the Yellowstone Super Volcano would literally be the end of the world for most people living in the western United States, and those living downwind of the eruption.


So Charles, I ask this out of honest curiosity, not some weird intellectual trap... Please excuse my lack of technical terms as I do not speak your vocabulary.

Isn't the ground that might open up and go volcano in Yellowstone on the eastern edge of the same ground that California sits on? In other words, if there is a bad earthquake in CA and the CA ground moved enough (like the 10+ feet that it moved in the 1906 earthquake), couldn't it cause the Yellowstone ground to open up into a volcano? Or close up tighter depending on which way it moved?


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

PaulS said:


> Well, looking at the time frame for the last three eruptions and their size I would venture to say that if we have an eruption in our lifetime it will be a relatively small event. The longer between the one that was 100000 years ago and the next one the size of the event would increase. If it took a couple of million years then it might be an extinction event but as long as it doesn't go for more than 250000 years it should be a minor event that would effect the area NW to SW of the volcano out a couple of thousand miles. Most of the world would not be hard hit except for one long winter (a year without a summer).
> 
> Is that better?


I don't know...it's tough to look at the last three major eruptions of the Yellowstone hot spot and make any definitive prediction regarding the size of future eruptions. The last three Yellowstone super eruptions occurred 2.1, 1.3, and .64 million years ago. This gives us an average super eruption interval of about 700,000 years (however, there have been several "smaller" eruptions...the last was roughly 100,000 years ago). It's been roughly 640,000 years since the last one.

The first of the last three super eruptions (2.1 MYA) was the biggest...it ejected a mind boggling 600 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere and onto the surface of the earth. The second super eruption (1.3 MYA) was the smallest of the three, but still ejected 67 cubic miles of rock, ash and debris (keep in mind...Mt. Saint Helens ejected less than 1/4 of a cubic mile, and Mt. Krakatoa ejected about 6.4 cubic miles of debris). The third (and most recent) super eruption was also very, very big. It ejected roughly 240 cubic miles of debris.

Experts have no way of knowing how much material there was in the Yellowstone magma chamber prior to any of the super eruptions. They also have no way of knowing how completely the magma chamber was emptied during any of these major events. Moreover, we know next to nothing about the crustal mechanics during the previous eruptions. Todays crust my be thicker, thinner, more fractured, less fractured, more or less mafic/felsic, etc., etc., than it was during the last few major eruptions.

There was only about 660,000 years between the two preceding super eruptions. It has been roughly 640,000 years since the last one. It really could go anytime, and it could be a big one.

I don't actively lose sleep over Yellowstone, but I keep a very close eye on it. As I mentioned, I know a couple of the geologists monitoring the caldera...they both said I'd be on a short call list should things start looking sketchy. You guys will know a few minutes after I do.

BTW, Paul...do you live in the tri-cities? Did/do you work at Hanford? Your profile pic looks familiar.


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## pheniox17 (Dec 12, 2013)

CM Yellowstone is a super volcano..

my question out if complete curiosity, if it blows in all its glory could it trigger a ice age??


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

Inor said:


> So Charles, I ask this out of honest curiosity, not some weird intellectual trap... Please excuse my lack of technical terms as I do not speak your vocabulary.
> 
> Isn't the ground that might open up and go volcano in Yellowstone on the eastern edge of the same ground that California sits on? In other words, if there is a bad earthquake in CA and the CA ground moved enough (like the 10+ feet that it moved in the 1906 earthquake), couldn't it cause the Yellowstone ground to open up into a volcano? Or close up tighter depending on which way it moved?


The main earthquake generator in California is the San Andreas fault. The San Andreas fault is what's known as a transverse, or strike-slip, fault. It's the tectonic boundary where the north American Plate (the piece of the earth's crust that the United States, Canada and Most of Mexico sits on) is sliding past the Pacific Plate. This fault/plate boundary doesn't extend into the mountain west region at all. It's confined to the west coast.

Yellowstone is the result of a persistent hot spot in the earth's crust. Hot magma wells up from deeper in the mantle and comes to the surface where Yellowstone is currently located. The Yellowstone system is currently largely unaffected by coastal tectonic forces. Even a very large earthquake along the San Andreas fault would be very, very unlikely to result in increased volcanic activity in Yellowstone. There simply wouldn't be enough energy generated in a single earthquake event that far from the source to trigger any movement of the magma in the Yellowstone system.

I wouldn't worry at all about the possibility of large earthquakes on the left coast producing dangerous conditions hundreds of miles inland. Fortunately (and unfortunately) Yellowstone is its own beast.


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

pheniox17 said:


> CM Yellowstone is a super volcano..
> 
> my question out if complete curiosity, if it blows in all its glory could it trigger a ice age??


Absofreakinlutely. If Krakatoa (which was one of the largest volcanic eruptions in historic times, and ejected 6.4 cubic miles of volcanic debris) triggered a mini ice age, and caused crops to fail throughout the entire northern hemisphere for the better part of a decade, imagine what an eruption literally 100x bigger than that would do?

If Yellowstone went off catastrophically, it would be an extinction level event for human kind. I think humanity would ultimately survive...mostly in small groups, and mostly in the southern hemisphere...but nearly all of us in the northern hemisphere would be gone.


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## pheniox17 (Dec 12, 2013)

Charles Martel said:


> Absofreakinlutely. If Krakatoa (which was one of the largest volcanic eruptions in historic times, and ejected 6.4 cubic miles of volcanic debris) triggered a mini ice age, and caused crops to fail throughout the entire northern hemisphere for the better part of a decade, imagine what an eruption literally 100x bigger than that would do?
> 
> If Yellowstone went off catastrophically, it would be an extinction level event for human kind. I think humanity would ultimately survive...mostly in small groups, and mostly in the southern hemisphere...but nearly all of us in the northern hemisphere would be gone.


finally one bonus of living down under, our wildlife has evolved to kill man, but we have a better chance in surviving a ice age


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## Inor (Mar 22, 2013)

Charles Martel said:


> The main earthquake generator in California is the San Andreas fault. The San Andreas fault is what's known as a transverse, or strike-slip, fault. It's the tectonic boundary where the north American Plate (the piece of the earth's crust that the United States, Canada and Most of Mexico sits on) is sliding past the Pacific Plate. This fault/plate boundary doesn't extend into the mountain west region at all. It's confined to the west coast.
> 
> Yellowstone is the result of a persistent hot spot in the earth's crust. Hot magma wells up from deeper in the mantle and comes to the surface where Yellowstone is currently located. The Yellowstone system is currently largely unaffected by coastal tectonic forces. Even a very large earthquake along the San Andreas fault would be very, very unlikely to result in increased volcanic activity in Yellowstone. There simply wouldn't be enough energy generated in a single earthquake event that far from the source to trigger any movement of the magma in the Yellowstone system.
> 
> I wouldn't worry at all about the possibility of large earthquakes on the left coast producing dangerous conditions hundreds of miles inland. Fortunately (and unfortunately) Yellowstone is its own beast.


Thanks for the explanation and calming my fears of this. Now I can go back to worrying about progressives and sharknado.


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## PalmettoTree (Jun 8, 2013)

Earthquakes are something I have never experienced. I would not know how to begin to prepare. I'm told we have a few on record but nothing like you west coast have or are likely to have.


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

Charles Martel said:


> BTW, Paul...do you live in the tri-cities? Did/do you work at Hanford? Your profile pic looks familiar.


I have never lived in the tri-cities but I worked at the Hanford plant for a day once back in the mid seventies. I was a road mechanic that was sent from Seattle to Hanford to make a 20 minute repair on a leased forklift. It took 5 hours to get there, 30 minutes to have the company vehicle searched, an hour wait for my guide who left as soon as I got to the building the vehicle was in, 30 minutes to wait for a mechanic, another 30 minutes to wait for an operator, 20 minutes to wait for a pipe fitter and then a warehouseman. It took me less than 20 minutes to make the repair and then I had to wait at the gate while they checked me for radioactive theft and another 5 hours to get home. 13 hours total.

Hanford paid wages plus overtime plus mileage plus my dinner, plus the $35 for the part. The wait for the other personnel was union crap because they had to have a mechanic present, The operator had to be there to operate the forklift, the pipefitter had to be there because there was pipe on the forks and the warehouseman to show the operator where to place the pipes. What a joke! I made $460 in 13 hours and Hanford paid $2335 to YIT (plus the cost of my meal) and the salaries of the four guys standing around waiting on each other for a job that could have been done for $43 plus the labor cost of their mechanic.

Oh, I carried a 357 Magnum onto the reserve and into the work area and the gate guard knew it. There were a lot of guys with M-16s patrolling the area but they didn't give me or my truck a second glance.


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## paraquack (Mar 1, 2013)

pheniox17 said:


> CM Yellowstone is a super volcano..
> my question out if complete curiosity, if it blows in all its glory could it trigger a ice age??


So maybe Obama knows something and wants all Mexicans to move to the US so when Yellowstone erupts, there will be plenty of room for us to move down there????


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## jro1 (Mar 3, 2014)

Luke 21:11

New King James Version (NKJV)

11 And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

No thanks, I don't want to live that far south. I like snow in the mountains and at Christmas, I like the rain in the spring, the hot sun in the summer, and a fall where the trees change their colors to reds and oranges. I like speaking American English and being understood in restaurants and stores. I speak a little Mexican Spanish but only because my daughter is married to an American with roots in Mexico. My grandsons from them have Spanish names and they try to be a bi-lingual family (at my daughter's insistence) although her husband speaks little Spanish due to being raised in the USA.


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## pheniox17 (Dec 12, 2013)

PaulS said:


> No thanks, I don't want to live that far south. I like snow in the mountains and at Christmas, I like the rain in the spring, the hot sun in the summer, and a fall where the trees change their colors to reds and oranges. I like speaking American English and being understood in restaurants and stores. I speak a little Mexican Spanish but only because my daughter is married to an American with roots in Mexico. My grandsons from them have Spanish names and they try to be a bi-lingual family (at my daughter's insistence) although her husband speaks little Spanish due to being raised in the USA.


then move to new Zealand


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

PaulS said:


> I have never lived in the tri-cities but I worked at the Hanford plant for a day once back in the mid seventies. I was a road mechanic that was sent from Seattle to Hanford to make a 20 minute repair on a leased forklift. It took 5 hours to get there, 30 minutes to have the company vehicle searched, an hour wait for my guide who left as soon as I got to the building the vehicle was in, 30 minutes to wait for a mechanic, another 30 minutes to wait for an operator, 20 minutes to wait for a pipe fitter and then a warehouseman. It took me less than 20 minutes to make the repair and then I had to wait at the gate while they checked me for radioactive theft and another 5 hours to get home. 13 hours total.
> 
> Hanford paid wages plus overtime plus mileage plus my dinner, plus the $35 for the part. The wait for the other personnel was union crap because they had to have a mechanic present, The operator had to be there to operate the forklift, the pipefitter had to be there because there was pipe on the forks and the warehouseman to show the operator where to place the pipes. What a joke! I made $460 in 13 hours and Hanford paid $2335 to YIT (plus the cost of my meal) and the salaries of the four guys standing around waiting on each other for a job that could have been done for $43 plus the labor cost of their mechanic.
> 
> Oh, I carried a 357 Magnum onto the reserve and into the work area and the gate guard knew it. There were a lot of guys with M-16s patrolling the area but they didn't give me or my truck a second glance.


That is classic Hanford! There probably isn't a bigger waste of taxpayer money (outside of welfare spending, maybe) than the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. I watched a team of union pipe fitters watch videos and play cribbage for six months in my conference room until they were transferred to a different facility. I'm serious when I say they spent about 3 hours working (they got ONE call the entire time they were in my building) in the six months they were there. The rules dictated that our facility had a team of pipe fitters on call whenever we were operating, so there they sat...collecting incredibly high union wages to do absolutely nothing.

Man, they certainly wouldn't let you carry a .357 magnum onto the site these days. Hanford patrol would literally throw you into the brig for that, now. A friend of mine was caught with a box of .223 shells in his trunk and was relieved of his position by the end of the day. They're ridiculous.


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

pheniox17 said:


> then move to new Zealand


New Zealand is truly one of the most beautiful places on this planet. For my taste, I believe the south Island to be the most stunning landscape on earth. I've thought long and hard about relocating there, as I believe the southern hemisphere will be safer than the Northern Hemisphere (especially America and Europe) during SHTF, but, in the end I won't be parted with my firearms.


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## Notsoyoung (Dec 2, 2013)

There was an earthquake off the cost of N. Korea yesterday in the 5.1 range.


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## Notsoyoung (Dec 2, 2013)

An 8.1 quake off the coast of Chile yesterday. Also google "animals leaving Yellowstone." I think I'll pick up a bag of rice and some bullets today. (I was going to anyway, but what the heck).


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## spokes (Feb 22, 2014)

I have been through a couple of minor temblors thanks to the New Madrid fault. It was really bizarre to look out the living room window and see the telephone poles lining the road rippling as if they were setting on a blanket that was being shook out over a bed.

I have no desire to go through a major quake any more than I desire going through one of the tornadoes that seems to regularly remind the folks around us who live in mobile homes why they call them MOBILE homes.

But this sudden storm of earthquakes is making me uneasy and filling me with the instinctive desire to go out and stock up on more emergency food. What is especially unnerving is the sudden migration of the bison away from the caldera. Read about that last night on the Drudge. Never underestimate the survival instinct in animals. They are definitely trying to tell us something. The way I see it there are four major areas to keep our eyes on. The Aleutian Islands/Alaska, The West Coast, The Yellowstone Caldera and the New Madrid faults. New Madrid hasn't had a major event in a long time. 

The big question is whether or not people will listen or pay attention. Probably not, at least not the percentage of folks who don't believe in being prepared for anything other than their next hand out from the government teat they are tethered to.


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## AquaHull (Jun 10, 2012)

jro1 said:


> Luke 21:11
> 
> New King James Version (NKJV)
> 
> 11 And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.


Luke copied off Matt's homework


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## AquaHull (Jun 10, 2012)

AquaHull said:


> It's just the beginning of sorrows.


Matt 24:8 says something like the above.


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

Notsoyoung said:


> An 8.1 quake off the coast of Chile yesterday. Also google "animals leaving Yellowstone." I think I'll pick up a bag of rice and some bullets today. (I was going to anyway, but what the heck).


If, indeed, animals are leaving Yellowstone en-masse, I would be very concerned.


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## spokes (Feb 22, 2014)

This just showed up on FOX.

Magnitude 6.2 earthquake hits Panama | Fox News

You have to admit. This is spooky.


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## pheniox17 (Dec 12, 2013)

spokes said:


> This just showed up on FOX.
> 
> Magnitude 6.2 earthquake hits Panama | Fox News
> 
> You have to admit. This is spooky.


just keep in mind (just on the ring of fire) there is over 1000 earthquakes a year... with modern media, and technology, it's very easy to be kept informed


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

Yep! It isn't that there are more earthquakes just more reports. They do that to take your mind off what DC is doing.


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## spokes (Feb 22, 2014)

Better reporting, more seismic stations? Probably. Can't argue that. But you have to admit, having three earthquakes over a 5 in what? A week/ten days along the ring of fire is kinda unusual, isn't it? At least I don't remember having so many so close together.


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

Not unusual at all. The USGS has a monitoring site where you can see where and how big the earthquakes were over the last few years. When the expected 9+ earthquake hits the LA basin and the Seattle area then it will be worth noting. Both areas are on the same fault - plate intersection and are long "overdue" for "the big one".


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

pheniox17 said:


> just keep in mind (just on the ring of fire) there is over 1000 earthquakes a year... with modern media, and technology, it's very easy to be kept informed


People tend to think that there are more earthquakes than there used to be...I'm not convinced that perception reflects reality. We now have the ability to detect earthquakes that would have gone undetected and unreported before. There are also people living in previously largely uninhabited regions of the world, now. A 7.2 earthquake in remote areas of Mongolia might not have been felt by more than a handful of human beings a few decades ago. Now, that earthquake would potentially be felt by hundreds of thousands of people.

I think we're currently experiencing a bit of a spike in global earthquake activity, but this sort of thing has happened many, many times before. The difference is that we now have the ability to detect and report earthquakes in a way we never could until very recently.


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## Charles Martel (Mar 10, 2014)

PaulS said:


> When the expected 9+ earthquake hits the LA basin and the Seattle area then it will be worth noting. Both areas are on the same fault - plate intersection and are long "overdue" for "the big one".


It's true, both LA and Seattle are incredibly prone to large earthquakes. It's just a matter time before mother nature reminds the inhabitants of both places that she still runs things.

I've heard people express concern that a large earthquake in California could cause the "fault zone" to open up all the way north to Seattle. This is impossible. LA sits very near the San Andreas Fault, which is where the North American Plate is currently sliding past the Pacific Plate. Seattle rests within an active subduction zone, where what is left of the Jaun de Fuca plate is diving beneath the North American plate. Though both cities are situated on or immediately adjacent to active plate boundaries, they're very different types of plate boundaries. Though they're both located on the "Pacific Ring of Fire", they aren't on the same fault system.

The illustration below shows the different plate boundaries located on the west coast of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

View attachment Tectonics_2.bmp


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

The Cascadia fault is moving north and is part of the same plate intersection as the San Andreas fault. This is not to say that they are the same fault but they are connected by the same plate moving north against the continental plate. The Washington subduction zone is an entirely different tectonic feature and has raised the mountains and feeds the volcanoes. The Cascadia fault is the one that is overdue for a 9+ quake not the Juan De Fuca fault.


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