When a severe earthquake strikes a distant community, Scott Ashford gets on a plane. He travels light but packs enough to be self-sufficient. He is, after all, going into a disaster zone where emergency personnel don’t need another mouth to feed. The head of the Oregon State University School of Civil and Construction Engineering is [...]
Tag » Earthquake
February 23, 2011
Listening Post
Corvallis seismic monitoring station feeds data to an international network
In an underground bunker west of Corvallis, scientists monitor tremors around the world
January 29, 2011
Wave Action!
Tsunami (pronounced soo-NAH-mee): A Japanese word meaning “harbor wave”
Wave machines and miniature towns reveal secrets of tsunamis.
July 23, 2010
Uncharted Waters
Communities, engineers and scientists prepare for the next tsunami
It may come like it did the last time, in the middle of a cold and blustery January night. Suddenly the ground will begin to shake, windows will shatter, bridges collapse, the electricity will go out and parents will frantically try to find a flashlight and dig sleepy kids out of bed, ignore everything else [...]
May 10, 2010
Tsunami safe?
We’re overdue. If the Cascadia subduction zone behaves as it has in the past, an 8.0 to 8.5 earthquake and a resulting tsunami have a good chance of striking the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years. That’s the take-home message from OSU marine geologist Chris Goldfinger’s studies of offshore debris flows. He has identified [...]
