This is the Juan de Fuca plate. As you can see it runs from the border of British Columbia and Washington and ends near portland. This plate is underneath North America and is very dangerous. In this article scientists are discussing how they think that the Juan de Fuca plate will cause a very massive new earthquake, i really am hoping that it won't be anything as major as Japan:(
There is a possibility that one of the future GREAT earthquake's the world will see, in the near future, will come from the Cascadia region of North America, and that it will originate with the Juan de Fuca plate.
"Since 2005 there has been a series of ongoing "creeping" earthquakes taking place within the subduction zone of the Juan de Fuca plate.
Two weeks prior to February 2, 2007, scientists in Canada began picking up "...an unusual travelling tremor deep inside the earth’s crust."
"Herb Dragert, a researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada in Victoria, said the wandering tremor is the result of subtle, slow slippage of the Juan de Fuca plate as it pushes against the North American plate in an area known as the Cascadia subduction zone.
A sudden slippage of the two plates would trigger an earthquake similar in magnitude to the one off the coast of Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004 that killed more than 300,000 people."
Earthquake scientists detect plate slippage"
Here is the plate:
Cool post, I had no idea!
ReplyDeleteI hope we don't have a huge earthquake. That would be really bad. :(
Wow it's hard to imagine that an earthquake will happen here and damaged the region as badly as one did in Sumatra! 300,000 is a large death toll.
ReplyDelete-Lizzie
I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!! IF YOU CAN SAVE US, DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO SAVE US!! but besides from the fact that i might die, i liked your post. It was informing and scary enough to grab the attention of my ever-wandering mind. Yay!
ReplyDelete