New York, December 3: US scientists have realized that one of the greatest dangers on the planet lurks just off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, as evidenced by previous enormous natural damage that has sometimes become rampant and uncontrollable, local media reports. The scale of the threat to the Pacific Northwest is difficult to comprehend: ground tremors lasting five minutes, more than 600,000 buildings toppled or damaged, 13,800 dead and more than 100,000 injured, according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency plan for 2022.

Economic losses from the earthquake alone are estimated at $134 billion, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday, citing The Washington Post. “The Cascadia subduction zone, where one plate of Earth’s crust subducts beneath another, stretches from Northern California to Canada’s Vancouver Island, where it becomes stuck and builds up stresses. Until the day they come loose,” the report said. Scientists now believe that at least 19 large megathrust earthquakes have been triggered in the Cascadia subduction zone over the past 10,000 years.

Near the most vulnerable fault zone in the Pacific Northwest, the Juan de Fuca plate just offshore is dipping beneath the North American tectonic plate at the speed at which fingernails grow, the report said. “One day a huge earthquake will shake the region. Minutes to hours later, a wave of sea water will swallow the land. Nobody knows when,” it continued.