Thar she blows!

A friend of mine in Oregon emailed me. “Did you hear that they’re sending a rapid response team to investigate a volcanic eruption off Vancouver Island?” he asked. 

I knew there volcanic activity going on out near the Juan de Fuca fault line, in an area known as “the spreading zone”. This was mildly worrisome, since the Juan de Fuca fault line is a triggering area for the entire Cascadian subduction zone, which has an unpleasant habit of cutting loose every 400 to 600 years and producing gigantic earthquakes and tsunamis. The last one was 305 years and two months ago. People took notice of that one and wrote it down. 

The notion of a volcanic eruption near Vancouver Island bothered me, too, since like all rational people, I’ve given thought to escaping the United States if everything goes all pear-shaped, and Victoria or Nanaimo are high on my list of places to escape to. Vast eruptions, blasts of superheated steam laced with a witch’s brew of toxic minerals and bolides would put a crimp in those plans, even if it did mean bargain prices on real estate. But it’s the only part of Canada where the climate doesn’t put in five months from November to April trying to kill you. I’m too old for that minus forty stuff. You really don’t want to live somewhere where a large volcanic eruption might be seen as an improvement. 

It turned out my friend had it right, but the suspected eruption wasn’t along the likes of a Krakatoa, or even a Mount St. Helens. In fact, it’s likely to be something closer in magnitude to a fart in a bathtub. But ever since geologists realized what the Cascadian Subduction Zone could do, there has been intense scientific interest in the area. This team has been around for 10 years, and this is the seventh underwater volcanic event that they’ve rushed off to. It’s a worthwhile endeavor; quite aside from monitoring a situation that has the potential to suddenly kill thousands of people, they’ve discovered all sorts of strange things around those volcanic vents, including huge transparent worms, and creatures that live in temperatures right around boiling and that breathe sulphur dioxide. 

But the area isn’t volcanically active, not in the way the west side of the Pacific from New Zealand to the Aleutians is, or along the west coast of South America. Indonesia, for instance, has volcanoes that can set civilization worldwide back a thousand years (and has done so in the past). But BC is kind of quiet on the volcanic front, settling for polite, almost apologetic geological belches from time to time. It’s all very Canadian. 

None of this, of course, means that a large volcano cannot be forming off the coast of Vancouver Island. Just in the past 24 hours, there have been over 3,000 tiny earthquakes, an indication that there is a LOT of activity going on down below. It could also be a triggering mechanism for the subduction zone, which is one of those events, like an Ottawa winter, that make people long for pyroclastic flows.

The Juan de Fuca fault runs from about one third the way up British Columbia (where it zigs and becomes the Queen Charlotte fault line) down to off the coast of Eureka in Northern California, where it zags and becomes the San Andreas fault line. That area between mid BC and northern California is the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The San Andreas gets all the attention because it runs under San Francisco and near Los Angeles and so can do damage to two of America’s most legendary cities, but the fact of the matter is that as faults go, the San Andreas–there is no polite way of saying this–is something of a weenie. About the best it can do is an 8.5 quake, like the one that struck in the lightly populated Tehachapi back in 1857. People who have lived near the Cascadia for more than 300 years laugh at 8.5 quakes. Obviously, that means not many people are around to laugh at 8.5 quakes, but the Cascadia is capable of lifting a leg and ripping off a 9.5 monster, at least ten times stronger than the Tehachapi Tea Party. Yes, we’re talking manly earthquakes for manly men here. 

Now, the thing about nine point five quakes is that you get your basic two hundred foot ground waves moving at your basic 650 miles an hour. Just the sheer nuisance value of this is amazing. Buildings that are supposed to be earthquake proof stop being earthquake proof, since there’s only so much you can plan for. Thinking that a modern building is safe in a 9.5 quake is a bit like thinking your building can handle a nuclear explosion overhead because it has a fire safety sprinkler system installed. 

Now the good news is that even while the epicenter of the quake is over 750 miles long, it’s also anywhere from 100 to 250 miles off shore, and down fairly deep. So it’s not going to utterly destroy major cities like Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland. It will do a lot of damage, kill a bunch of people, and put the whole regional economy offline for a few years, and be the biggest catastrophe in American history. But it could have been worse.

Along the coast is a different matter. Not many people live right on the Pacific Northwest coast, since it tends to rain all winter and be foggy all summer, with the result that the get three sunny days a year, whether they need them or not. But there are people there, and if the zone cuts loose, the first big tsunami would arrive in a matter of a few minutes. 

Not being in direct line with the epicenter helps, but is not a guarantee that one won’t get struck by these waves. Wave encounter obstacles, such as island or shallow areas, and BEND, changing direction of travel. A wave could travel straight along the Juan de Fuca straits (everything in the area is named after that explorer; that Fuca really got around) or into Puget sound, focused and more intense as a result of the narrowing of the channel. If you’re on a shore line, even if you can’t see the Pacific from where you are, head for higher ground. Fortunately, the Pacific Northwest has lots of higher ground. Which isn’t surprising, given that it’s a subduction zone. 

Well, that’s it for the bad news.

Oh. Wait. There is one more thing.

There’s always a chance that the volcanic activity off Vancouver Island is the beginning of another Krakatoa. Krakatoa is the world’s most dangerous volcano, and last erupted in 1883 with an estimated force of 200 megatons, killing tens of thousands, mostly through tsunamis, and making enough racket for the sound waves to travel around the world twice. One time, it erupted, splitting Java and Sumatra into separate islands and throwing every major civilization in the world into a dark age that lasted about 750 years. It’s sort of the black sheep of the volcano family. Incidently, Anak Krakatoa, the latest incarnation, has been growing at the rate of five inches a week since the 1950s. 

But this newest activity is off the coast of Canada, near gentile and dignified Victoria, the town that tries to be London only without all the horse turds on the cobblestones.

So this can’t be a Krakatoa growing up there. It would be noisy. It would be rude. It would be damned inconvenient.

It would be just so un-Canadian.