southern whidbey island fault map

In effect, the wave energy is trapped by the edges of the body of water. Faults can also be grouped based on what part of the crust they occur in. from Whidbey Island to Vancouver Island (Figure 1). Tsunami waves can travel over 500 miles per hour in the open ocean. It devastated the coast of the Pacific Northwest and sent an orphan tsunami to Japan. This movement created a tsunami in Puget Sound and triggered a large landslide into Lake Washington. These sediments were laid down 20,000 to 60,000 years ago, before the last ice age. PDF Cretaceous-Jurassic accreted terrains - University of Washington In the late 1960s, speculators considered the Puget Sound region a frontier for petroleum exploration. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is located in Hawaii and is responsible for issuing alerts to all the countries that border the Pacific Ocean. The largest active fault that will affect Washington (and the whole Pacific Northwest) is the Cascadia subduction zone. The San Andreas in California, for example, left gaping scars in the Earths crust, at the surface. Every year Western. A seiche is a large standing wave caused by the resonance of a particular period of wave energy. The last earthquake on the Seattle fault (about AD 950) triggered a landslide and seiche in Lake Washington. Using the stratigraphic column from the Freeport quadrangle map, confirm that you can recognize . Drop, Cover, and Hold On whenever you feel shaking. Still think well avoid Gods wrath, its not going to happen regardless of what the multi millionaire TV preachers tell you. Some parts of major cities (including Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia) have been built on land that was reclaimed from soft and wet tidal ocean areas. The French Onion trench exposed glaciolacustrine claystones, till, colluvial deposits, and Holocene soils. This uplift creates a very broad wave called a tsunami. , * NOTE: Hazard maps for each jurisdiction will only be included if that jurisdiction is at risk to that hazard., Copyright Island County. When the ground shakes during an earthquake, it moves up and down, acting like additional gravity. Photo by G.K. Gilbert, from the Steinbrugge Collection of the UC Berkeley Earthquake Engineering Research Center. Large and damaging earthquakes are inevitable in Washington, but no one knows exactly when they will happen. The 1964 M9.2 Alaska earthquake created a large tsunami from the fault rupture, and many smaller tsunamis from on-land and underwater landslides. The average time between large earthquakes is about 535 years, but has been as little as 200 years, and more than 1,000 years. With Medical Martial Law imposed in Washington state. Another piece can be seen under the elevated lanes of northbound Interstate 5 in South Seattle not far from the Rainier brewery. Finding Concealed Active Faults: Extending the Southern Whidbey Island If you are already planning your Christmas gifts, please buy with us on Amazon. . The experts say few are ready. The map also shows potentially active faults from a separate 2014 report (click here to download). Also issued a warning for the UK that the Italian chaos could come to Britain Paleoseismologists have found places that record many of these tsunami deposits. USA Earthquake Hazard Map. One model suggests it extends to about 30 miles east of Yakima. Clicking on the map will download the publication. These large underwater slides only occur during very large earthquakes and are one way to learn about earthquakes that happened thousands of years ago. Black lines show the South Whidbey Island Fault Zone, the Seattle Fault Zone and the Tacoma Fault Zone. If everyone tries to use their cell phones, it can overload the system. The San Andreas fault in California is a good example of a very active strike-slip fault. Even when the location of a fault is known, there is much additional work to determine how hazardous it may be. Washington has few large normal faults because it is mostly in a region of compression. In the area of North Bend, the fault zone is 4 miles wide and consists of a series of parallel faults. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. But scientists theorize that the area has suffered only four . Were working on pedestrian evacuation maps that show the best routes for pedestrians to take to evacuate, said Forson. Camano Island, WA 98282, Mailing Address Whats up with the 50 US nuclear bombs stored at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, right on the same fault line California hasnt seen a catastrophic earthquake recently. Read more below to learn about how and where earthquakes occur, what to do before, during, and after an earthquake, and what scientists are doing to learn more about them. Stories from tribes near Seattle have also helped us to learn that the last earthquake on the Seattle fault was about AD 900950. This is a very good example of a strike-slip fault. Sherrod says practically every place they. Not all faults are active. South Whidbey Island Fault Zone. Fault Activity Map of California Earthquake Hazard Maps | Sound Seismic Many landslide-prone areas of Washington are also located near active faults. Consider a magnitude 7.4 quake with Whidbey Island at or near the epicenter. The plate that is forced down can have faults within it that still rupture and produce earthquakes. Brick chimneys cascade off rooftops. Customers lift their eyes from phone screens. Some events appear to be only 200 years apart, and others are more than 1,000. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. This map shows different seismic design categories that correlate with amount of seismic risk. Floods. Southeast Extension of the Southern Whidbey Island Fault, Washington: Implications for Earthquake Hazards, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20192, Region 2: South Atlantic-Gulf (Includes Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), Region 12: Pacific Islands (American Samoa, Hawaii, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). When a fault with vertical movement ruptures the ocean floor, it lifts up part of the ocean. Each peak of the Olympics stuck out with picturesque clarity in the distance. HAZARD MAPS As part of the Hazard Mitigation Planning process, mapping of the hazards that have the potential to affect the jurisdiction is performed using geographic information systems (GIS) software. Tap/click on "gear icon" for options and settings. Emergency planners all had a simple message: Its not IF a disaster will happen, its WHEN. Thats why were pushing for a lot of vertical evacuation structures to be built hotels or schools, because its not an easy problem to solve, he said. Official websites use .gov The southern Whidbey Island fault represents a segment of a boundary between two major crustal blocks. Years ago, Howard Gower and James Yount came to the Puget lowlands to study earthquake risks and stumbled on what appeared to be a fault in Island and Snohomish counties. Hundreds could die, with thousands more injured. Faults can also occur within a tectonic plate when the plate itself is deforming. A magnitude 7.4 along the southern Whidbey fault would rattle 18 counties in Washington, according to a federal projection . One of the best views of SWIF should be from Grand Avenue Park in Everett. For several years, scientists pondered where this important regional fault zone continues southwestward from its mapped location in the Everett area. In Washington, the risk from earthquake-induced landslides is large. People stagger into the streets to avoid an avalanche of debris. Earthquakes occur nearly every day in Washington. 1 School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8P 5C2, Canada 2 Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA It may not be possible to find water, fuel, or food until services are restored days or even weeks after the event. Because they can travel great distances, tsunamis generated from earthquakes across the ocean can still cause damage. Additional fault studies by state and federal geologists in the next few years will help determine the frequency and severity of earthquakes along these fault zones. This part of the Japanese coast had not seen this type of seismic rupture in some 800 years, and what failed was that walls built to keep tsunami waves were not high enough. On a brilliant November day, Sherrod took in the panorama from the parks bluff. SWIF ranges from 12 miles underground at its deepest to right at sea level in a few scattered spots, like Cama Beach, Holmes Harbor and Woodinville, according to Sherrods research. At the Brightwater treatment plant in Woodinville and at Crystal Lake in Maltby, the government researchers found telltale slopes of offset ground, known as scarps, indicative of a long-ago quake. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Roads, bridges, or ramps may have been damaged by the earthquake. You will not be able to google what to do in an earthquake when it is happening. The team determined that the Rattlesnake Mountain fault zone, originally mapped by DNR geologist Tim Walsh in the 1980s, is likely the southern continuation of the southern Whidbey Island fault, extending this fault zone from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Rattlesnake Mountain near North Bend. The buildings in this photo were built on soft materials that liquefied during the 1964 Niigata earthquake in Japan. of Earth and Space Sciences, Box 351310, Univ. In the 1990s, scientists producedan animationthat shows inundation, and people wont have much time to run to higher ground. Bookcases and china cabinets topple, trapping people beneath. It startled Johnson that such massive faults had gone undetected for so long. An official website of the United States government. Then consider that the Seattle Fault is a complex of faults with various branches that run at or just below the surface. Johnson and others . A national credit rating service has improved its opinion of WhidbeyHealths financial future. The northwest-trending southern Whidbey Island fault zone occurs along a significant terrane boundary between basement blocks underlain by Eocene marine basalts of the Coast Range province to the southwest and pre-Tertiary metamorphic rocks of the Cascades province to the northeast. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Walsh said that Whidbey Island through the years has been subjected to a number of small quakes, roughly 2 or 3 on the Richter scale. Johnson and others (1996) have described the southern Whidbey Island fault ( figure 1) as a broad (6 - 11 km) transpressional zone comprising three main splays, within which the local late Quaternary uplift rate is at least 0.6 mm/yr. Coupeville, WA 98239, Camano Office endobj This map of gravity residuals measured over the puget lowland reveals a pattern of deep, fault bounded basins (cool colors) and uplifts (warm colors). Another big one is expected, and it could be devastating. Across the northern portion of Bainbridge Island, light radar or lidar images taken from airplanes clearly show the Seattle Fault running right on the surface. x\[s8~OU)! Along the coast residents may have between 20 and 30 minutes to get to higher ground. A paleoseismologist will look for surface ruptures along faults and may use carbon-14 dating to learn when the rupture happened. These include (from north to south, see map) the: Devils Mountain Fault Strawberry Point and Utsalady Point faults Southern Whidbey Island Fault (SWIF) Rogers Belt (Mount Vernon Fault/Granite Falls Fault Zone) Cherry Creek Fault Zone Rattlesnake Mountain Fault Zone Seattle Fault Tacoma Fault Saddle Mountain Faults Story telling is an important part of the Native tradition and is how their history is passed down to the next generation. Everything points to one thing, Sherrod said, waving his hand across the inland sea. The next earthquake is inevitable, but the variability makes it difficult to know exactly when. Like other faults, when enough stress builds up, the megathrust will rupture. Seconds later, its as if Whidbey Island is trapped in a cocktail shaker, lurching back and forth. Beef Barley and French Onion trenches cross the Little Bear Creek lineament. The trench did expose faults, but it was not possible to conclusively demonstrate offset of Holocene units. Much of the Southern Whidbey Island fault zone (SWIF), which runs in a north-westward direction from Woodinville to near Port Townsend, Washington, remains mostly . Earthquakes. Make an emergency response plan for you and your family. <> And experts fear it could be even worse than The Big One.. This evidence can come from finding something younger than 12,000 years that has been deformed or moved by the fault. This means that a tsunami made by an earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone will start to impact the Washington coast in less than 15 minutes. Theres an uneasy hush. Geologists are constantly trying to better understand the faults in our state. PDF Seismic Characterization of the Seattle and Southern Whidbey Island So the fault remained mostly a mystery until the 1990s. Discover in this article the most dangerous earthquake zones for Seattle and its area: The Cascadia Subduction Zone, the Seattle Fault and the South Whidbey Island Fault. Photo from, Liquefaction can be a big problem. For example, the Cascadia subduction zone has had between 15 to 19 earthquakes over the past 10,000 years. But the Cascadia Subduction Zone isnt just a fault; its an overlapping joint between tectonic plates, parts of the Earths crust that float on layers of molten rock. The shaking usually lasts less than a minute and doesnt generally cause a tsunami or have many aftershocks. PDF Holocene Fault Scarps and Shallow Magnetic Anomalies Along the Southern Once we got it, we were sort of shocked to see these big faults in the Puget lowlands, he said. And while scientists keep digging for more information and more situational awareness of what we face, the other problem is human. Once in the open, Drop, Cover, and Hold On. 1 NE 7th Street If you are in bed: STAY there and COVER your head and neck with a pillow. Within minutes, he spotted something groundbreaking. Because Japan was so well prepared, mostretrofitted buildingsoutside of the tsunami zone survived. Faults are features in the Earths crust where rock periodically breaks and moves, releasing seismic energy and creating an earthquake. The ground shaking from these earthquakes can last for several minutes. The South Whidbey Island Fault is also dangerous. But it didnt. In 2017, he began studying the possible aftermath of a major SWIF quake. Landslide at Salmon Beach was triggered by the 1949 Tacoma earthquake and caused a tsunami. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Disoriented drivers wonder whats wrong with their cars, then realize something much bigger is amiss. Never use a lighter or match near damaged areas. A thrust fault is a special kind of reverse fault that has a shallow dip. The Cascadia subduction zone along the Washington and Oregon coast is one of the biggest hazards to our state and is a good examples of this kind of fault. Mudslides. The southern Whidbey Island fault: An active structure in the Puget Lowland Washington, Geological Society of America Bulletin 1996;108;334-354. The Flying Squirrel and Mountain Beaver trenches cross the Cottage Lake lineament. If the epicenter is Everett, the SWIF could cause. Image from the, Aquatic Lands Habitat Restoration Program, South Lake Washington Restoration Project, Scientific and Technical Support to Aquatic Programs, Washington Geologic Survey Publications Catalog, Washington Geologic Survey Photograph Collection, Wetlands of High Conservation Value Map Viewer, Timber Sale Remaining Volume by Purchaser Reports, Spanish - Brocha, Salal y Otros Productos Forestales, Complete: Baker to Bellingham Non-Motorized Recreation Plan, Community Wildfire Resilience and Preparedness, Utility Wildland Fire Prevention Advisory Committee, Blanchard, Reiter, Walker Valley and Nearby Islands, Teanaway Community Forest Advisory Committee, Teanaway Community Forest Advisory Committee Past Meetings, Faults and Earthquakes in Washington State, Pacific Northwest Seismic Network Seismo Blog, https://buildingfailures.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/tiltedbuilding.jpg, Pacific Geoscience Center of the Natural Resources of Canada. The buildings sank when ground shaking weakened the underlying sediments. Other types of seismic energy (S waves) also travel through the earth, but they move with a side-to-side (shearing) motion. Emergency Management Earthquake - Island County, Washington During the shaking liquefaction occurred, the sand lost its strength, and the car sunk. In the Puget Sound region, it takes a trained eye to recognize rocky outcrops and subtly raised ground as evidence of a fault. People who look for evidence of past movement on faults are usually called paleoseismologists (from paleo-ancient and seismologist-one who studies earthquakes). Swarm of hundreds of small earthquakes rattle Vancouver Island. PO Box 5000 North Anatolian Fault is currently locked, accumulating stresses which could be suddenly released anytime now like the Hayward Fault in California, Videos: New destructive M7.5 earthquake hits Turkey a few hours after largest quake in 100 years kills 1300. Johnson and others (1996 #4751) described the structure and stratigraphy of the southern Whidbey Island fault zone. Maps. EVERETT The South Whidbey Island Fault is connected to a system of powerful earthquake fault lines stretching from Victoria, B.C., to Yakima that is capable of unleashing a devastating. Hey Biden! California Department of Conservation. For example, a M7 earthquake releases 32 times more energy than a M6 earthquake, and 1,000 times more than a M5 earthquake. Earthquakes on faults like these may cause tsunamis in the Puget Sound region. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Be prepared and read more on DNR, USGS, King5, Strange Sounds and Steve Quayle. South Whidbey Island Fault Earthquake Scenario: 7.4 Magnitude Buildings Damaged: 320,776 Fatalities: 90 - 432 Injuries: 2,920 - 7,361 Economic Loss: $15,590,000,000 SeaTac Fault Earthquake Scenario: 7.2 Magnitude Buildings Damaged: 375,954 Fatalities: 16 - 123 Injuries: 1,394 - 3,404 Economic Loss: $13,400,000,000 Tacoma Fault The spectacular falls flow over the remains of a newly discovered 20-million-year-old volcano, apparently formed atop the main part of the fault zone as magma rose upward along weak fault planes. The map is from a, This car was parked on sand during the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. Photo by Steve Palmer. The key, Sherrods group would discover, was buried on Whidbey Island under layers of mud, peat moss and decaying marsh grass in the murky tidal waters at Crockett Lake, alongside the Coupeville ferry dock. Even places that are far from active faults are still at risk during a large Cascadia subduction zone earthquake. Theres a must-see documentary film called Cascadia The Big One that exposes whats currently going on in this region of the Cascade volcanoes and the Pacific NorthWest. Notice the Seattle Fault Zone bounding the Seattle Basin to the south. When this happens, even a very small slope can cause the ground to slide. DO NOT get in a doorway. Washington State Earthquake Hazard Map. Some faults reach the surface and can be found by geologists. The last large earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone was in 1700. Faults often occur at and near the boundary of large tectonic plates because the plates are moving in different directions. When earthquakes occur on faults that reach the Earths surface, the ground may rupture. A lock () or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. A baristas hand hovers over the bean grinder. His team wanted to find the rate of sea level rise along the shore. The southern Whidbey Island fault (SWIF) stretches from the vicinity of Victoria, B.C., across Puget Sound as far as the Cascade Range. 4 0 obj That could spell trouble not only for its namesake island but for south and north King County and further west. The fault, not so much. The material becomes so weak that it behaves more like a liquid than a solid. The moment magnitude scale replaced the Richter scale in the late 1970s. It is not yet possible to predict when a fault will have an earthquake. It is a qualitative scale that ranges from IXI (1-11) and measures the amount of damage caused by an event. The southeastern and central parts of the southern Whidbey Island fault zone form the southwest margin of the Everett basin and northeast boundary of the Seattle basin. This fault will have an earthquake in the future, but we cannot predict exactly when. The South Whidbey Island Fault and Darrington Devil's Mountain Fault bound the Everett Basin. An earthquake along the southern Whidbey Island fault reshaped the land some 2,700 years ago. When an earthquake happens there will not be time to google what you are supposed to do. In the early 2000s, USGS scientists including Brian Sherrod set out to further Johnsons work and better understand the slumbering fissure. Emergency Management Hazard Maps - Island County, Washington What about the localized tsunami risk? Sherrods son has since completed graduate school in applied geosciences. We do know that it is active and will likely produce a large M67.5 earthquake when it next ruptures. Mapping along the Snoqualmie River valley also helped answer the important question of where the Seattle fault lies east of its last mapped position near Issaquah. The Cascade block to the northeast is floored by diverse assemblages of pre-Tertiary rocks; the Coast Range block to the southwest is floored by lower Eocene marine basaltic rocks of the Crescent Formation. Experts believe a magnitude 9.0 could happen there anytime in the next 200 years or so. Earthquakes can be measured in many ways, but the most accepted method is called moment magnitude. Also check out Ear to the Ground, published by the Department of Natural Resources. " A lot of people are transplants, " Forson said. The fault zone is up to 57 km, correlates with gravity and magnetic anomalies (Finn and others, 1991 #4753; Blakely and others, 1999 #4747), and has been interpreted as a complex zone of transpressional deformation (Johnson and others, 1996 #4751). Knowing how often large earthquakes have happened in the past helps us to know how often they might occur in the future. These faults and earthquakes usually occur at great depth (tens to hundreds of miles). Most injuries occur when people inside change rooms or try to leave the building.

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