A February map from the U.S Geological Survey shows the
estimated range of the great Cascadia earthquake of 1700. A
massive earthquake like the one that unleashed a giant tsunami
and killed nearly 16,000 people in Japan a year ago not only
could happen here in the U.S., but probably will — and
relatively soon in terms of seismological history. The Tohoku
earthquake was the most closely monitored in history, yielding
an unprecedented breadth of data, geophysicists and
seismologists say. And for residents of the Pacific Northwest,
the new data should be worrisome. "It's just like Japan, only a
mirror image," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist at the
University of Hawaii and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The
disaster in Japan occurred because of stress from the Pacific
tectonic plate sliding below Japan, according to new research
discussed last month at the annual conference of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, British
Columbia. The lead researcher, John Anderson, a geoph