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In the Pacific Northwest, We Have Many Faults

Finding faults ...

It was 1991 when I started in the civilian emergency management world. At that point, the Cascadia Subduction Fault was brand new and the first big exercise with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that I participated in was an earthquake scenario, Response 91B.

Since that time, many more significant faults have been found here in the Pacific Northwest. I try to track all of them, but this article 10 Earthquakes Rumble off the Oregon Coast in Pacific Ocean that Claire Rubin shared with me, reminds me that I don't know about all the ones in the books already.

Either I've never heard of or had forgotten that I'd already read about the Blanco Fracture Zone that is called out as the source for the 10 earthquakes mentioned above. We need to keep reading and learning about the hazards where you live.

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.