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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/high-chance-major-oregon-quake-study-221238959.html
The western US state of Oregon has a 40 percent chance in the next half-century of suffering a massive earthquake on the scale of Japan's 2011 disaster, a study said Wednesday.
The Pacific Northwest -- from the Oregon-California border to Vancouver Island in Canada -- has endured 19 huge earthquakes of around 8.7-9.2 magnitude over the past 10,000 years, Oregon State University researchers said.
An additional 22 major earthquakes have impacted only the southern part of the so-called Cascadia fault that runs from the Oregon areas of Coos Bay to Newport, the study said.
"The southern margin of Cascadia has a much higher recurrence level for major earthquakes than the northern end and, frankly, it is overdue for a rupture," the study's lead author Chris Goldfinger said in a statement.
The study, published online by the US Geological Survey, estimated a 40 percent chance of a major earthquake around Coos Bay, Oregon, over the next 50 years.
It said that the earthquake could be on the scale of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck in the Pacific Ocean near Japan on March 11, 2011. Some 19,000 people died as the tremor set off a devastating tsunami.
But Oregon has far fewer preparations in place than Japan, which is one of the world's most earthquake-prone nations.
The western US state of Oregon has a 40 percent chance in the next half-century of suffering a massive earthquake on the scale of Japan's 2011 disaster, a study said Wednesday.
The Pacific Northwest -- from the Oregon-California border to Vancouver Island in Canada -- has endured 19 huge earthquakes of around 8.7-9.2 magnitude over the past 10,000 years, Oregon State University researchers said.
An additional 22 major earthquakes have impacted only the southern part of the so-called Cascadia fault that runs from the Oregon areas of Coos Bay to Newport, the study said.
"The southern margin of Cascadia has a much higher recurrence level for major earthquakes than the northern end and, frankly, it is overdue for a rupture," the study's lead author Chris Goldfinger said in a statement.
The study, published online by the US Geological Survey, estimated a 40 percent chance of a major earthquake around Coos Bay, Oregon, over the next 50 years.
It said that the earthquake could be on the scale of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck in the Pacific Ocean near Japan on March 11, 2011. Some 19,000 people died as the tremor set off a devastating tsunami.
But Oregon has far fewer preparations in place than Japan, which is one of the world's most earthquake-prone nations.
