Pulitzer Prize: New Yorker Writer Wins for Cascadia Fault-Line Piece

Congratulations to Kathryn Schulz, the author of the New Yorker article on the Cascadia Earthquake Fault, see The Really Big One. Even if no one is taking substantive actions as a result, at least she brought attention to the seismic risks in the Pacific Northwest. If anyone mentions that $5M has been allocated for a seismic warning system — please laugh in their face for me, since $5M is not even a drop in the bucket for what is needed to make the NW more seismic resilient, let alone to have a warning system that is robust enough to take advantage of it to save lives.

Erik Wemple, a Washington Post blogger, called out the award and highlighted the style that Kathryn Schulz used to describe the seismic risks. He did make one poor assumption near the end of his blog post, "When we first read those graphs, we followed precisely the instructions of Schulz and vowed never to consider relocating to the Pacific Northwest." He may never move here, but others are coming in droves. Even if they did read the article, people have a way of compartmentalizing risk that I've written about before:

1. It will not happen
2. If it does happen, it won't happen to me
3. If it does happen to me, it won't be that bad
4. If it does happen and it happens to me, and it is bad, there is nothing I can do about it

Needless to say we can wish away risk in a nanosecond. What about Mount Rainier, the most dangerous volcano in North America? People are building homes and schools in its path. What about the wildland fire risk? People still put cedar roofs (kindling by another name) on their homes. What about the risk of a tsunami on the ocean? Here is a beautiful homefor sale, right by the ocean.

As I was just reading about today on another issue, the cybersecurity of our electrical grid, until it happens, people and organizations don't have the ability to project into the future and take action today to protect themselves and their businesses or jurisdictions.