Saving Cascadia
Page 43
Jamaican, she decided, with a lovely smile. He was pointing to her, half turning as if embarrassed to confront a pretty woman, and she dropped her gaze to find his Frisbee sitting on her stomach.
“Sorry, my lady!” he giggled, catching it adroitly as she spun it back to him with a flick of her left hand.
Her right hand was holding something and she looked in that direction, squinting against the delicious warmth and glare of the sun to see it was the hand of a well-tanned male dozing in the chaise next to her.
As she studied the detail of his body, Doug Lam stirred, smiling in his sleep, and she closed her eyes again to join him.
Author’s Note
Someday, a great earthquake will begin shaking the U.S. Pacific Northwest from Northern California to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The massive temblor will be a monster, lasting up to five minutes as it releases at least three hundred years of pent up tectonic energy and measures as high as M9.5 on the Moment Magnitude Scale. And, minutes after the shaking ends, the same coastal areas will face a massive tsunami, just as they did the last time.
Of course Saving Cascadia is a work of fiction, but I think it’s important to know that the geophysical background of this story is mostly fact: there really is a Cascadia Subduction Zone, for instance, and it does run along a north-south axis from the coast of northern California through Oregon and Washington to the northern end of Vancouver Island. It’s the area in which the westward-bound North American tectonic plate collides with and overrides an oceanic slab of rock known as the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate—the same continent-building process that produces mountain ranges and volcanoes—and one I wrote about extensively in a 1988 nonfiction book called On Shaky Ground.
There is a locked and dangerous section of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and for the purposes of this high-speed tale, I’ve assigned it a fictional name: the “Quilieute Quiet Zone.” It is, by whatever name, an area of locked rock in slow-motion collision some twenty kilometers beneath the coast, and as long as it remains locked, we remain spared from the next great subduction zone earthquake.
Similarly, my so-called “Theory of Resonant Amplification” concocted by the story’s geophysicist, Doug Lam, is, in reality, nothing more than my own fictional leap from solid science to convenient speculation about what could trigger a catastrophic release of the pressure in the Quiet Zone. The theory, in brief, is this: That there are three spots along the Vancouver Island-Washington-Oregon coasts where any large, man-made vibrations or impacts on the ground (such as pile drivers or explosives) will be focused and amplified by the vertical shape of the strata below as the waves pass downward through the miles of rock, and that means that the resulting seismic impacts—however puny in comparison with nature’s normal forces—would end up hammering away, squarely, at what is probably the hair-trigger of that future great quake. If the Cascadia Subduction Zone is already at the breaking point (and it may well be), who knows whether something as seemingly insignificant as that could serve as the proverbial “last straw.”
Seismology is too new a science to have all the answers, yet what seismologists in particular have learned to do with seismographs is just short of black magic: akin to someone placing a stethoscope against the side of the Sears Tower in Chicago, tapping lightly on the wall, and redrawing the entire engineering schematic based on nothing more than interpretation of the echoes. That “black magic”—accompanied by the brilliance and hard work of our geologists and the U.S. Geological Survey—has put together a clearer picture of the seismic hazards we face than we ever thought possible. For instance, we now know that the last great earthquake and massive tsunami along the Pacific Northwest coast was not only in the year 1700, but specifically around 9 P.M. on January 26, 1700, a fact uncovered by astounding scientific detective work spanning half the globe.
Come visit my Web site at www.JOHNJNANCE.com for more information and links to some fascinating Web sites dealing with these subjects.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost—and as always—this work was made possible by the the professional efforts of my in-house editor and business partner, Patricia Davenport, BA, MA, as well as the steadfast support of my University Place staff, Gloria Gallegos and Lori Carr, and the extensive editorial help and ideas from Bunny Nance.
The writing of Saving Cascadia required the generous help of professionals in a host of disciplines, chief among them seismology, geology, medicine, aeronautics, nautical navigation, and engineering.
I especially want to single out and thank my old friend Dr. Brian Atwater of the USGS in Seattle, to whom this book is codedicated, along with Art Tiller, chief pilot for Airlift NW; Bob Yerex, veteran airevac and Coast Guard helicopter pilot; Clark Stahl, consummate helicopter pilot of Seattle’s Chopper 7 (KIRO-TV) and another old friend (not too old); all of whom read the manuscript and assisted immeasurably by fine-tuning my presentation of both the massive seismic threat to the Pacific Northwest, and my presentation of the care and feeding of helicopters, especially those used to transport injured people. Brian Atwater was one of the bulwark contributors to my 1988 nonfiction work, On Shaky Ground, which covered the true threat of major earthquakes to the entire United States.
From the medical community there have been many friends and colleagues whose ideas and guidance have materially assisted me, including several from the National Patient Safety Foundation, Kathleen Bartholomew, BS, RN, nurse manager in Orthopedics at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital; Dr. Paul Abson of the Everett Clinic and Dr. Diana Abson-Kraemer; and, even though he may not be aware of his contribution, friend and fellow author Dr. Alan Wyler.
In Laramie, Wyoming, Cindy Elrod of the University of Wyoming provided much appreciated reading and manuscript corrections.
I, of course, want to thank the members of my great publishing team at Simon & Schuster, starting with Executive Vice President and Publisher David Rosenthal; Publisher Carolyn Reidy; my wonderful Simon & Schuster senior editor, Marysue Rucci; and Marysue’s frighteningly efficient and eternally friendly assistant, Tara Parsons; along with copy editor Tom Pitoniak; Elizabeth Hayes, associate director of Publicity; and my long-time friend and mentor Adene Corns.
And my great appreciation, as well, to my agents at The Writer’s House, Amy Berkower and Simon Lipskar, whose advice and intellect guided this project.
Ultimately, my eternal thanks to you for being a loyal fan and reader. The Web site is for you, www.JOHNJNANCE.com, and my e-mail address is: talktojohnnance@johnjnance.com. I love to hear from you, and that e-mail address does in fact reach me in person.
About the Author
John J. Nance is the author of seventeen major books, five of them nonfiction. Two of his works, Pandora’s Clock and Medusa’s Child, aired as highly successful television miniseries. He is a decorated Air Force pilot, veteran of Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm, a veteran airline captain, ABC’s aviation analyst, and a popular professional speaker on issues of safety, communications, and teamwork, especially to the medical profession. John welcomes communications from his readers and can be reached through www.johnjnance.com.