A big Pacific Northwest quake could cause land to sink in minutes

The Pacific Northwest is ripe for a major earthquake — and shaking and tsunamis wouldn’t be the only threats from such an event, according to new research. Coastal land would also sink nearly seven feet, meaning people who survive the initial catastrophe would face severe flooding.

An earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone with a magnitude greater than 8.0 could cause a sudden subsidence — the sinking of land — that, paired with rising sea levels, would enlarge floodplains expanding up to 115 square miles, found the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We could have a disaster on the scale of Japan 2011 or Sumatra 2004,” said Tina Dura, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of natural hazards at Virginia Tech. “It’s the same kind of fault. It has the same capability of making a huge earthquake, tsunami and coastal subsidence.”

The sudden sinking of land could permanently alter coastal communities, which experience flooding during king tides or storm surges but could become more frequently inundated, Dura said.

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