36
When the tsunami comes
SeismoIogisis mrn Zhat a massiひe earthquaたe “′ill somedaγ hit Jhe NorthuノeSちfr嬢・ering a “mll o/
脇ter 60 /あt嬢●h, Said Eric Scigliano ;n Politico. A Coast Guard station短he onb′ line ofde/をnse
N THE NORTH shore of
0 Washington’s wild Olympic
Peninsula, a SCimitar-
Shaped sandspit called Ediz Hook
arcs for 3 miles into the Strait of
Juan de Fuca. At its tip, between
SnOWy mOuntains to the south and
Vancouver Island to the north, Sits
What may be the nation,s most sce-
nically sited military installation-
and its most vulnerable.
U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Port
Angeles is the very first of first
responders when something goes
WrOng, aS it often does, On the
State’s tangled straits and inlets and
StOmy Outer COaSt and, SOmetimes,
On the peaks and bluffs overlook-
A Coast Guaγd cormin研he coniγOhofa 45-句ct boat region,s violent seismic history
ing them. The station’s three MH-65
DoIphin helicopters are血e only aircraft the whether we’ll be first responders or victims:,
Coast Guard, America’s frontline coastal
defense and search-and-reSCue Service, bases
along Wなshington’s 3,026-mile coastline. In
2021 , they undertook 1 95 search-and-reSCue
missions. Ediz Hook is also home base for
four seagoing c調ers, 87 to uO feet long,
and one 210-foot mediun-endurance cuttel;
Plus two shorトrange response boats to deal
Wi血Iocal emergencies.
Many Coast Guard rescues are routine-
boats adrift with stalled motors, emPty gaS
tanks, Or SCrambled navigational equip-
ment. Others become Discovery Chamel
legend. One helicopter pilot, Lt. Thomas
Loftis, tOld me about his first: a father and
SOn Who got swept out into Bellingham
Bay, 70 miles away, On a little johnboat one
January night when the temperature was
24 degrees and the wind blew 40 miles an
hour: ``We got there in 30 minutes,,, Loftis
SayS PrOudly.
But those expIoits are just a warm-uP for
the disaster to come. Someday-neXt Week,
next yeaらmaybe next century-a Sudden
and deadly marine shock will strike the
Northwest coast: What locals call the Big
One, a Circa magnitude-9.O offshore earth-
quake generating tsunami surges reaching
60 feet high or more.
Just how ready Coast Guard rescuers are
for the big wave to come is a question
With life-and-death implications, for them
and for those they defend. As Lt. Kyle
Cuttie, Who was the station’s communica-
tions officer when I first visited it nearly
eight years ago, tOld me, “It’s hard to say
The last word
BOUT 130 MIL亘S west of Ediz Hook,
A莞
miles past the outer coast, tWO
重量。Slabs of planetary crust are locked
in a titanic str撃gle. One, the offshore Juan
de Fuca Plate, lS What’s left of a continent-
Size plate that has for the past 200 mi11ion
years been intermittently sliding under the
larger North American Plate, an aCtual
COntinent, in a process called subduction.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone thus formed
StretChes for more than 700 miles, from
Califomia’s Cape Mendocino past the
northem tip of Canada’s Vmcouver Island.
The sliding-under movement of subduction
三s very different from the side-tO-Side grind-
1ng Of the San Andreas Fault to the south.
There, frequent movements, eXPerienced as
earthquakes, release tectonic tension before
it builds to catastrophic levels. AIong the
Subduction Zone, howeveI; this tension
builds for hundreds of years and releases
With explosive force. The greatest strain has
accumulated off VAshington, making it the
likeliest target zero for the next megaquake
and tsunami. When the Juan de Fuca Plate
jams farther under the North American
Plate, it will push it up 30 feet or more and
displace vast quantities of seawateL And a
tsunami will be bom.
The last Cascadia earthquake, With an
estimated magnitude of 9.0, OCCurred
around 9 p.m. on Jan. 26, 1700, a date
known precisely thanks to meticulous
Japanese records of an extraordinary
``orphan tsunami’’with no known source.
Native peoples on this side of the Pacific,
from Califomia’s Yurok to the
Nuu-Chah-nulth of Vancouver
Island, tOld corroborating tales of a
great shaking and the sea pouring
in and taking everything in its path
The Hoh and Quileute, Who live at
two of the most vulnerable polntS
On Washington’s Olympic Coast,
credited the waves to a titanic battl
between Whale and Thunderbird.
But the Pacific Northwestis written
history didn’t begin until the late
1700s, and these oral histories,
together with a Native tradition of
locating villages safdy upland from
the beach, Were ignored.
It wasn,t until the 1980s that scien-
tists began piecing together the
They’ve now identified more than 40 earth
quakes along the subduction zone in the
PaSt lO,000 years. “Megaquakes’’of mag-
nitude 8.7-Plus, CaPable of generating large
tsunamis, have averaged 430-year intervals
Five appear to have reached the magnitude
(9.1) of Japan’s 201 1 Tbhoku (Fukushima)
Earthquake and the 2004 Sumatran quake
Whose t?uPami killed 228,000 people in
l l countrleS. After 323 quiet years, anOthei
COuld strike anytime.
When it does, it will send waves surging
OutWard at initial speeds of up to 600 mile∫
an hour Less than an hour after the
quake, they will inundate the coast up to
an elevation of lOO feet above sea level in
SOme SPOtS, mOre tyPically 30 to 60 feet,
depending on water depth, tides, and other
factors. They will sweep up buildings, treeS
Vehicles, PeOPle. Anyone along the shore
Who feels the shaking will need to head
話語霊盤悪霊詰討ill
be damaged and even if they aren’t, traffic
Will quickly snarl. Those who dawdle, Walk
too sIowly, Or PauSe tO CO11ect keepsakes or
help the injured will com disasteL
According to VAshington’s Emergency
Management Division, 1 12,555 residents of
the four counties lining Washington’s ocean
COaSt and the Strait ofJuan de Fuca live in
the inundation zone鵜land that tsunami
WaVeS Will overrun. Ea亜er benchmarks sug-
gest that 23 percent will be unable to reach
higher ground in time and 18 percent-
Perhaps 20,000 people, mOre血an lO times
the number who died in Hurricane
Katrina一一Will be washed out to sea or

crushed by debris. U.S. GeoIogical Survey
data and the current scientific consensus sug-
gest a 15 to 24 percent like血ood that such
a megaquake will ∝Cur in the next 50 years.
黒
marine-Safrty operation: the Puget
Sound Pilots. The Pilots are 50-Plus elite
mariners who shuttle out into the Strait
of Juan de Fuca to meet the freighters,
tankers, and cruise ships steaming toward
Seattle and other ports and guide them
through the twisting channels of the
Salish Sea. Each year they guide about
7,000 passages-inbound or outbound-
canying $80 billion in cargo between Ediz
Hook and the ports on Puget Sound.
For years both the Pilots and Coasties
assumed that when the ground started
shaking they would escape the Hook the
way they came to work: driving out on
the two-1ane road to the mainland. That’s
in keeping with the traditional advice for
those living in what’s called the inundation
zone: As soon as you get the waming-
shaking ground, a blaring alarm, the sea
pulling back from the shore-hurry to the
highest ground you can find.
A land exit might be a reasonable ‘response
for the more common sort of waves gener-
ated by a distant earthquake or voIcanic
eruption, mOSt likely in Alaska. Not so for
the much larger tsunami generated by a
Cascadia Subduction Zone quake,
which would arrive an hour or less
after血e shaking starts. The shaking,
which can last as Iong as five minutes,
will also eat into the short window
of time before a wave arrives. It will
likely make driving impossible and
walking and r皿ming di飴cult. The
U.S. GeoIo鏡cal Survey calculates that
it would take 90 to lOO minutes to
walk from the Coast Guard station to
Safe ground on the mainland巾early
twice as Iong as the tsunami will take
to arrive. A rurmer could make it-if
血e way is clear and he or she can sus-
tain血e pace for nearly 4 miles.
The Jip of Ediz Hoo亙sJγet訪ng out tou肋rd 」もγt Angeles
But the Pilots’case is also special.
They have two 70froot boats that
they use to meet incoming ships and
deboard from outbound ones, and those
vessels will be needed for the recovery. In
early 2015, the Pilots decided to conduct a
trial escape in the opposite direction-Out
to sea. They decided to invite their Coastie
neighbors to participate.
On a crystalline moming, about 55 o飴cers
and seamen mustered around the Coast
G葛]ard station,s flagI)Ole. LしCuttie intro_
The last word
duced Ian Mille与a geOmOrPhoIogist and
expert on coastal hazards, Who explained
the hazards and choices invoIved and
conduded, “I want you to be safe. More
important, I want you to be functional, SO
you can save me and my family.” Cuttie and
a few other Coasties then trooped down
to the Pilots’dock and boarded their boat,
which shoved off. They rounded the Hook
and made it to safe water in 16 minutes.
That was encouraglng. But it was no guar-
antee血at they’d be able to get血ere under
actual quake conditions-→SCaping tumbled
buildings, gathering personnel scattered
around various facilities, CrOSSing jmbled;
sunken ground and roiling wateL The boats
would have nearly no time to stop at the
Coast Guard stationb docks on血e way out.
ATHER THAN REDUC賞NG their stake
R
in Ediz Hook, the armed forces
have compounded it. In 2015, just
as tsunami concems were heating up,血e
U.S. Navy announced it would build a new
“Maritime Force Protection Unit’’pier and
support complex at the Coast Guard base.
This facility, COmPleted in 2018, ServeS aS
an advance base for the armed escort ships
that protect the eight Trident submarines
(which bear an estimated quarter of the
nation’s nuclear arsenal) as they shuttle
between their base at BangoちWなsh., and
the open sea. Bangor; Situated on a long
fjord called the Hood Canal, is shielded
from tsunamis; the escort station that
guards the subs is not.
The Puget Sound Pilots were aghast at
this decision. Then they began to see pos-
sibilities. Unlike the Pilots, much smaller
response boats, Which would strain and
perhaps fail to evacuate everyone from the
Hook, just one of the 250-foot escort ships
could easily accommodate everyone likely
to be on the sandbaL The escort ve§Sels are
also kept ready to go at all times. They’re
docked beside the Coast Guard facilities
and could load their DerSOnnel fasteL
3
The Pilots would love to pdss rescue hono〕
on to the Maritime Force Protection Unit.
``Now that they have those Navy ships, W(
want to make sure we’re not the first line (
defense,,, says Pilots president Ivan CarlsoI
``We’d like to be there just as backup.’’Bul
they have no idea whether the Navy facilit
is ready to take on that responsibility.
Repeated email and phone inquiries to
Naval Base Kitsap-Bangoちthe subs’home
POrt, brought no substantive response
save one public document that’s no longer
posted online: the final envirormental
assessment for the Ediz Hook facility. All i
says about t§unami hazards is `くIn the ever]
of a tsunami, for all action altematives
PerSOmel at the TPS [Transit Protection
System] pier and on TPS vessels docked at
the pier would follow the USCG emergep(
response plan in force’’at the air station.
Senior Coast Guard officers also referred
me to that plan, Called the Sector Puget
‡謹嵩窪霊豊議藍霊
gies. I filed an obligatory FOIA requ叩fo]
it, Which bounced between local, reglOnal,
ational Coast Guard offices before
轟
一rejected on what seehed flimsy
端盤弼蕊謹葦諾藍霊
with minor redactions. It defines missions,
roles, COmmunicatiohs, and emergency coI
tingencies for na調ral threats ranging from
``heavy weather,, to earthquakes, tSurlami§
and voIcanic eruptions.
But it looks toward a smaller local
quake along. a Puget Sound area fault
or a tsunaml generated by an Alaskan
quake, Which would give several hours
waming. It does not contemplate a
Cascadia megaquake immediately fol-
lowed by a tsunami.
This outdated, inadequate plan may
SOOn be replaced. Since I made my
mquiries last August, the District 1 3
administradon has formed a T:unami
Wbrking Group, wi血members from tl
Ⅵshington and Oregon sectors as wel
as district specialists. The new plan is
expected to be completed this auturm.
Sometime af亡er that,血e Coasties for心
first time will conduct their own trial
evacuation-nearly lO years after the Pilot
first invited them aboard血eirs.
Meanwhile, 130 miles to the west, a kilo-
meter deep beneath the dark Pacific, the
灘豊島謹葦豊轟t 」臆・_ ▲臆_1臆臆」臆 ト
a catastrophic lreleasF.
Adaクted ,.om m aγticle /海タpublished bγ
Politico. Used uノi初かe榊nission.