Around 10,000 human lives hang in the bargain as an underwater fault line under the Pacific ocean can trigger a major earthquake along the west coast, according to a Metro UK report. The Cascadia Subduction Zone, responsible for this potential threat, is spread across 600 miles of the US regions like California, Oregon and Washington. It also extends as far as British Colombia in Canada.

Not just one, but four different segment of fault lines

Scientists have recently studied this zone and found a rather dangerous detail. According to reports, the underwater fault is not located at just one area, but is split across four segments, meaning it could collapse one at a time or all at once and in both scenarios, catastrophic effects can take place.

Some fault regions have difference in the types of undersea rocks and seismic characteristics, and therefore some places can be even more dangerous than the other. If the researchers from Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are to be believed, the fault line can cause an earthquake at magnitude 9 or more, typically the worst, on the planet. A megaquake with a magnitude as high as this can trigger 30 metre-high tsunamis, killing thousands of people living on the West Coast and cause billions of dollars of property damage.

Situation far worse than was imagined, say researchers

The fault in the undersea lines were detected after a 41-day long research trip which involved listening activities on the seafloor and mapping images of the subduction zone accordingly. Although the fault lines were known about beforehand, but the severity of it was still unknown, until after this latest research, that depicted the situation as worse than it was being assumed. A similar earthquake of magnitude 9 had occurred off the coast of Japan in 2011 due to similar fault zones that resulted in a deadly tsunami, killing thousands.

FAQs:

1. Can earthquakes lead to tsunamis?
Earthquakes with a higher magnitude can create disturbance in the tectonic plates of the earth, leading to deadly tsunamis along the sea coasts, causing sever damage to lives and property. 2. Why did the 2011 Japan tsunami happen?
An earthquake of magnitude 9 hit Japan reportedly due to a fault line under the sea, that triggered a massive tsunami, killing almost 20,000 people.