Here's EXACTLY What to Do When the Next Megaquake Hits: Cascadia Subduction Zone

You should check out what people do in Mexico city during an earthquake. We have an alarm system in the whole city. That gives us mostly a minute to evacuate the buildings. We do evacuate when it's possible, if we are in an upper floor we might go to the roof and wait. We learned this at school and reinforce it every year on a national earthquake drill, we actually don't enforce the drop and cover action nor the triangle of life. If we cannot escape the building we should go to the restroom so if in case we're stuck we might have water access. I hope you find this information useful

I have about 40 friends who went through the 2011 Japanese quake. Several of them were on the refuel floor of Fukushima Unit 4. I went there a month later and spent 9 months. During that time we had hundreds of 5 and 6 magnitude aftershocks. One of them was a 7.3. This is spot on. Here’s something I learned. ALWAYS have a light. Your cell phone has a light. My friends at Fukushima had a hell of a time getting out. Few lights and collapsed stairwells.

I was in a 7.6 earthquake in Taiwan in 1999. It happened at 01:47 a.m. We were in bed. There was nowhere to drop, cover and hold onto. In the darkness of the night, with glass crashing all around, there was no way even to make it to the bathroom door frame. We were lucky, only 1 person dies in our 10-storey apartment block. The first earthquake in Turkiye last week happened in the middle of the night. People were in bed. The advice given to drop, cover and hold on, is only useful in daylight hours. Better advice is: if you live in an earthquake zone, have an emergency backpack prepared and placed next to your bed - with a battery torchlight, heat protection blanket, a bottle of drinking water, a charged up mobile phone, your wallet with cash in it. Before going to sleep make sure the route to the exit door has no obstacles. In reality if you are in bed when a earthquake begins, and you are lucky to survive the first shake, then do get out as you can before the inevitable aftershock hits.

We live in a little town in Oregon and we voted to rebuild our city building to withstand earthquakes. Its even a place we're told to go to if we're close and an earthquake happens ❤️ Watching them build it was amazing.

Lived through 2 Southern California earthquakes in different homes, both times our chimneys collapsed and belched black soot into rooms. One I was standing in doorway and dog was running in circles barking. Then he was coated in soot and just stood there in shock. Broke the tension for me…😂

I grew up on the Pacific coast of Washington state. I drove by the Ghost Forest of the Copalis River nearly every day for years. I worked in a coastal city and my final job before retirement was helping install tsunami warning sirens across the city. Being retired and knowing a bit about surviving a disaster, I started building bug out bags as Christmas presents for my family and friends. If you care about someone, helping them prep for a disaster is a gift of love. And disasters can happen anywhere, tornadoes in the south or Midwest, hurricanes in the Gulf or East Coast, earthquakes or tsunamis in the West. A few buck and a couple of hours can significantly improve your safety. Call it the cheapest insurance you can get.

Thanks for this great, informative video. My comment and concern is this: The city of Portland backed down on a plan to have all URM buildings be made to display a sign that made it clear to residents, workers, etc that they were in a dangerous building in the event of any earthquake. The idea was shot down out of fear that this would hasten the possible demolition and gentrification of these buildings and this would unduly harm a lot of poorer folks who often live and work in these very structures. Ouch!! So instead of working on a financing mechanism "we" have decided to cover our eyes. Out of supposed concern for these vulnerable people we decided as a city to simply wait for these building to kill the very people we pretend as a city to care so deeply about. How will we explain this irresponsible neglect to the world the day after the big one?

Wow, 8:45 Surprised! That's picture where I lived during this 1989 Prieta quake. We were Red Tagged and not allowed back inside. Entire neighborhood was crumbled. Lived there many years, but uncontrollably moved out THAT day, with no belongings. Had beautiful views right on the San Francisco Bay. It WAS a frightening, day that I never forgot. I was at work in morning. I wore a red dress to work and an hour prior to the quake , I became suddenly deeply tearful and sad for no reason, lasting an hour. An hour later, when the quake hit, I knew exactly why. Listen to your body. Being tearful is not something one does wearing a red dress. I was working in a brick building downtown. Beware, yes, brick falls outward into streets as I saw first hand brick flying past windows. I called the people away from the exterior windows and flying brick. LOL,One lady stood between a doorway jam. I yelled for her to come to my spot, because there was nothing but interior glass walls surrounding her chosen door jam. Running to me, she looked like wabbling drunk. As soon as the quake stopped, I told everyone get home fast. Those that were slow, ended up stranded in San Francisco traffic jams all night. I was one of the first who rapidly got across Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County. Later, I co-founded our town and county's first Disaster Preparedness Plan, and Neighborhood Responses Team, including medical, fire, school children and senior watch phone-tree, and Fire and Police Dept CERT training and Certification. Now, yep, I live far away from the coast high in the pine trees. Will do without my SF view.

watching videos like this feels like watching pandemic risk analysis videos in the 2010's

I moved back to Kyoto, Japan from Wakayama, where I lived 5 minutes from the ocean. The Nankai Trough subduction zone is predicted to generate a megaquake within the next 10 - 30 years with an accompanying 9m high tsunami (in my area) in about 1/2 hour. For the year that I lived there I was in constant fear of it happening. Even here, when it hits, Kyoto will get a 7.5, but at least no tsunami. I went through one that size in Hawaii. Your mind goes totally blank. I lived in Vancouver, BC and Victoria for years, and preps are still woefully inadequate. Thank you, Dr. Goldfinger - I've watched you on TED and on many other videos. Thank you PBS for this video. The CSZ and what it will do needs to be broadcast as much as possible. Denial is still an overpopulated state.

My wife and I are 2 buildings from the beach in Socal, in a 2 story wood framed stucco duplex. Less than 1/4 mile away is a hill that would climb us above all but the worst Tsunami waves. During the last big Cascadia earthquake/tsunami about 12 years ago, our tenants jumped in their car almost immediately after we got the tsunami warning to evacuate via car to higher ground. The prediction was about 60-70 minutes for the wave to get this far south. About 2 hours later, they returned home. As it turned out, they got into a massive traffic jam of people thinking the same thing and only got about 200-300 feet where they were stuck for 2 hours. They'd have made much more progress walking or on bikes. In any highly populated area, your 4 wheeled vehicle will be stuck in a huge traffic jam, even if you leave just minutes after a warning.

I live on an island, directly west of Seattle, about 50 feet from the shore of Puget Sound, in a building that was constructed before the 80's... I am not sure how much riskier a living situation can be. But I can tell you that I do live in paradise, and I am grateful every day...

Well done - glad to hear someone speak about the P-wave opportunity to decide what to do -- and the recommendation to have a plan ahead of time. There's not enough time to think through "what should I do" for the very first time during a quake, a lot of people just freeze (based on all the videos I've seen). : ) When I go somewhere it's habit for me now to think, "where would I go if there was an earthquake right now?" A good habit.

I definitely think we should teach situational awareness. From someone that lives in Olympia Washington I would love to see more videos on this subject. Thank you for all the great videos!

MY DAUGHTER Was working in a lab when the DC earthquake hit (2011?). My daughter had no idea what to do.One of her Asian lab mates grabbed her hand and said outside. There was little damage from that incident, but it was the people from places that usually have earthquakes that were prepared.

I have been in Japan for 15 years and the differences between the same magnitude quake in Kyoto and Tokyo really surprised me. Kyoto's were a surprising and quick, violent upward jolt. Whereas Tokyo's were a slow side to side rocking motion that I prayed would not get stronger. .

Reinforcing buildings can only go so far. One of the problems, and especially in a place like Seattle, is the risk of soil liquefication. Seattle is built primarily upon fill dirt from the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, and so the risk of the soil sifting out from under many of the building is quite high, and we saw some of that during the Nisqually quake. Sadly, much of western Washington will see soil liquefication during a 9.0+ quake, and it is hard to say with any certainty just how much damage that will cause.

Thank you. As someone living in the PNW, this is appreciated

I was in Tokyo not long before the 2011 quake and I was interested in engineering for quakes. I noticed things like cross road rail bridges had been retro fitted to keep them on their bearing blocks, there were lots of open areas dotting the city, buildings were retro fitted with bracing, pile wraps for anti spalling etc. After the quake, there was lots of shaking in Tokyo but no obvious real damage. A friend's 5 year old did a duck under the table in their apartment building, everything on shelves came down, bookcases and wardrobes went over but he was unscathed. We'd gone to the earthquake centre a few months before and did sessions with exercises on shaker tables etc, all good fun but handy.

The Big One striking when I'm on vacation in California or the west coast (which isn't often) is a worry of mine.... Anyone within 100 miles of the New Madrid Fault also needs to watch this and be prepared. When the New Madrid went the first time in 1811 it was on of the largest quakes in American history. It re-routed the Missisipi River, rang the bells in Philidelphia and the plains indians in the Dakota's described it as a "great thundering." Even as a Chicagoan my grandmother told us about a small earthquake in southern IL that many people felt all the way up to Milwaukee and rocked her apartment in Hyde Park in the 70's. In 2007 a similar small quake centered in Evansville, IL woke me up from bed, shook my blinds and even broke storefront windows of some businesses in my suburb near Chicago. Earthquakes can happen almost anywhere and so many places around the world (except Japan) aren't prepared for larger ones.