A doomsday tsunami is likely to strike the US in the near future, but scientists say it’s better if it hits sooner rather than later, writes dailymail.co.uk.
A new study has found that a colossal earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) in America’s Pacific Northwest is almost assured to take place by 2100, with a 37 percent chance it”ll happen at any point in the next 50 years.
The CSZ is a nearly 700-mile-long fault line off the west coast of North America where one tectonic plate, the Juan de Fuca Plate slides beneath another, the North American Plate.
It stretches from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to the southern half of the US West Coast, running along the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. If an earthquake between 8.0 and 9.0 in magnitude struck today, scientists warn that a 100-foot mega tsunami would wipe out most of the West Coast, as the coastline would drop by almost eight feet instantaneously.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimated that there would be 5,800 deaths from a CSZ earthquake alone and another 8,000 due to the mega tsunami it would unleash.
The international team, led by researchers at Virginia Tech, added that these dire predictions will only get worse as more time passes because of rising sea levels.
