This past week, dozens of emergency managers, geologists and state and local preparedness planners gathered in Seattle at the 5th annual Hazus conference. FEMA’s HAZUS is a loss estimation modeling program for earthquakes and can help communites prepare for earthquakes. KOMO News wrote an article on potential damage from a Seattle Earthquake (click here to see the article). CREW has used HAZUS to develop different earthquake scenarios that can be found here.
Updates & Announcements
Slow “Earthquake” Occurring Now Beneath the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound
The expected 2011 episodic tremor and slip (ETS) event has done the unexpected by starting months early. These events happen in the deep part of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, “down dip” from the area where the Juan de Fuca Plate is completely locked against the North American Plate. These “slow earthquakes” reoccur every 14 months on average and have been remarkably consistent over the past decade. Another of these events was expected to begin in late October, early November 2011 but has begun months early. Details from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.