![]() In the cities of the Pacific Northwest, the impact will be terrible. Image courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives When the person accidentally kicked the drum-depicted in the illustration above by Nuu-chah-nulth artist Tim Paul-he got earthquake foot and his steps set off vast tremors. On Vancouver Island, the Nuu-chah-nulth people told tales of mountain dwarves inviting a person to dance around their drum. In the next 50 years, the chance of another magnitude 9 earthquake there is 1 in 10. The evidence is massive: subsided marshes, drowned forests, sediment layers showing enormous landslides that flowed out on the ocean floor, seismic profiles of the Juan de Fuca plate, and satellite measurements of a coast deforming from the stress of a plate that’s once again locked. ![]() Geologists now know that the Pacific Northwest has been having these earthquakes and tsunamis irregularly every 500 years or so their oldest record in sediments goes back at least 10,000 years. The coast dropped by as much as two meters, and a tsunami brought floods more than 300 meters inland. The earthquake that resulted was probably a magnitude 9, about as big as earthquakes get. Along this coast, the Juan de Fuca plate was pushing under the larger North American plate, had gotten stuck-locked-but kept pushing until it released, abruptly and violently. Here’s what geologists say: the earthquake that almost certainly occurred on the night of January 26, 1700, ruptured North America’s Pacific Northwest coast for hundreds of kilometers, from northern California, through Oregon and Washington, to southern Vancouver Island. The land shook and the ocean flooded in, said the Huu-ay-aht people who are part of the Nuu-chah-nulth, and people didn’t even have time to wake up and get into their canoes, and “everything then drifted away, everything was lost and gone.” Farther north still, on Vancouver Island, dwarfs who lived in a mountain invited a person to dance around their drum the person accidentally kicked the drum and got earthquake-foot, said the Nuu-chah-nulth people, and after that every step he took caused an earthquake. That same night, farther up the coast in what is now Washington, Thunderbird and Whale had a terrible fight, making the mountains shake and uprooting the trees, said the Quileute and the Hoh people they said the ocean rose up and covered the whole land. But then they looked down and saw the water covering their village and the whole coast they knew they could never make the world right again. “And the water was flowing all over.” The people went to the top of a hill, wearing headbands of woodpecker feathers, so they could dance a jumping dance that would keep the earthquake away and return them to their normal lives. “The earth would quake and quake again and quake again,” said the Yurok people. His feet were heavy and when he ran he shook the ground so much it sank down and the ocean poured in. In the year 1700, on January 26, at 9:00 at night, in what is now northern California, Earthquake was running up and down the coast. ![]() Listen now, download, or subscribe to “Hakai Magazine Audio Edition” through your favorite podcast app. This article is also available in audio format. Stream or download audio For this article Septem| 3,100 words, about 15 minutes Share this article Indigenous people told terrifying stories about the devastation but refused to leave. Illustration by Jeffrey Veregge The Great Quake and the Great Drowning Mega-quakes have periodically rocked North America’s Pacific Northwest. Thunderbird and Whale had a terrible fight.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |