OK, just got back from Chicago. Sorry for not posting this correctly, I’m a n00b it seems. :)
I live 30 minutes from the Pacific in Grays Harbor. The harbor is is about 90 feet below me. I have a house that was built in 1915, by the Weatherwax family. Old lumber barons in the day. All 3”x11” rough cut Cedar floor joists, study framing, 1/2” tongue and groove Cedar siding with 3/4” lath and plaster walls.
I have the sill plates bolted down to the foundation. She is a beauty with four levels, basement, 1st & 2nd floors, and a finished attic.
Wish me luck if it hits this weekend. I’m one block from bedrock also. At elevation 92’, I hope the tsunami misses me.
Here’s a very simple but detailed website on the NW subduction zone. Gray’s Harbor produced some of the evidence of past large earthquakes. It WILL happen again.
Your house is probably up high enough as I believe that 60 feet is about the highest a tsunami can get - but the harbor may change that (greater or smaller I don’t know). I think the tsunami would reach your place in 15 minutes or so. Damage to your home - hard to tell. You’re getting pretty close, but you should survive I think (although odds are you will be dead and gone of old age!) - unless you are on unstable landslide material. Oh - local landslides going into the ocean can create a much larger “tsunami” (I think they are called something else). A landslide in Alaska hit an inlet and I think the wave was 200 feet or something crazy!
The last NW subduction zone EQ occured between 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM, local time, on January 26th 1700. This quake, with magnitude estimated at 9.0, rocked the region with strong shaking for several long minutes while coastal Washington plummeted as much as 1.5 meters relative to coastal waters.
How is it possible to know that any event on the Cascadia Subduction ever occurred, let alone to place it within one hour of its occurrence 300 years ago? (Lewis & Clark explored here in 1804!). Let the evidence speak for itself and discover an ancient earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.
http://www.pnsn.org/HAZARDS/CASCADIA/land_levels.html
snip:
Multiple cycles of fresh-water peaty horizons, overlain by tsunami and marine deposits, are found in coastal lowland soils of Washington and Oregon, Brian Atwater, of the USGS, has studied and dated these layers at many places along our coasts. He finds evidence for seven cycles of sudden submergence during the last 3,500 years - an average of 500 years between events, with the most recent horizon dated by Carbon 14 to between 320 and 410 years ago.
Opps - I remembered wrong - not 60 feet, but 90 feet is a common maximum for large quakes. (upside-down dyslexia??)
As with anytime near the coast, if you feel a quake, get to high ground (or tall building) as fast as you can. Do NOT wait for an announcement, sirens, etc. Just assume that it was the big one off shore. Living in Gray’s Harbor I imagine you know all of that though.)
If it were me, even at 92 feet, I would turn off the gas coming into the house and take a walk up the hill with my family.