Growing up in Southern California, earthquakes were a given. Before college, I thought Oregon was a “safe zone”, somewhere free of seismic threats. I was wrong. My freshman year, I took a class called Volcanoes and Earthquakes, which introduced me to what scientists now call the last Cascadia earthquake event in 1700. Only recently, scientists have found evidence that a magnitude 9 earthquake shook the coast, causing coastal “ghost forests” and a tsunami across the Pacific in Japan. Since then, the Cascadia subduction zone off the coast of the Pacific Northwest has been building pressure, and is expected to one day cause yet another megathrust earthquake.
This started my journey into the earth sciences, which has led to an internship with the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT). The National Science Foundation-funded organization headquartered at the University of Oregon (UO) aims to build seismic preparedness in the Northwest after decades of inactivity. This includes conducting research, providing training and education for future geoscientists, and encouraging communication with the public.
CRESCENT Director and UO Professor of Earth Sciences Diego Melgar faces an uphill battle against generations of seismic inactivity.
“The issue has been that these large earthquakes have been few and far between, and as a result, we have forgotten,” Melgar said. “So the earthquake culture of the region is not nearly as well developed as it is in other places like California.”
Being prepared is less about knowledge than practice—especially among young people with little earthquake experience. Enter the Great ShakeOut. On Oct. 16 at 10:16 a.m. PST, 22.4 million people worldwide are expected to join the Great ShakeOut, the largest earthquake drill in the world. Launched in California in 2008, the event grew into an international effort by 2011 to promote earthquake safety. Each year on the third Thursday of October, communities across earthquake-prone regions practice how to prepare for seismic hazards.
Preparation is crucial not just for safety, but for confidence. Andre Le Duc, Vice President of Safety and Risk Services and Chief Resilience Officer at the University of Oregon, encourages Oregonians to focus on what they can control.
“If you’re in a crisis and don’t know what to do, that creates more stress,” Le Duc said. “Whereas if there is a tangible action you can take, you’re going to feel more empowered.”
But action is easier said than done, especially after a few centuries of seismic silence. Kelly Missett, Communications Manager at the Oregon Hazards Lab (OHAZ), began as the Technical Engagement Regional Coordinator for ShakeAlert.
OHAZ, part of the University of Oregon’s Department of Earth Science, works with agencies to study natural hazards and provide public safety tools like ShakeAlert, which issues early warnings for earthquakes and tsunamis.
“For me to assume that everyone knows what to do in an earthquake, or that everyone knows we are in earthquake country, that’s really not true,” Missett said.
Preparation can also be costly. Earthquake kits and supplies add up, but knowing what to do is free and often the most effective protection.
“Do I invest in an emergency kit or do I buy lunch? Those are hard trade-offs,” Le Duc said. “That’s why basic, essential actions – how people move in a space and what they do – are so important.”
Communicating hazard information is clearly a top priority for emergency professionals, but difficult when it comes to disasters on such a massive scale.
“It can be hard to communicate the level of risk,” Missett said. “We can throw out a lot of numbers, but making them relevant to people’s daily lives bridges the gap between science and the public.”
Even scientists face uncertainty. Geoscientists like Melgar can estimate the size of the next earthquake, but not exactly when it will strike.
“The public wants a single answer,” Melgar said. “That’s a problem across geohazards, but it’s particularly acute in earthquakes because big events are so infrequent.”
As I’ve learned while working for CRESCENT, hazard communication is a balance of conveying risk without “catastrophization.” It’s easy to lose people who feel powerless to stop something they can’t control.
“My concern is getting the public to understand that there are things you can do, even if you start small,” Le Duc said. “Sometimes we think, ‘There’s nothing I can do, so no reason to do anything.’”
The solution, he says, is building resilience before disaster strikes. Events like ShakeOut are a tool to help people prepare and recover more effectively.
“Resilience is about the ability to adapt and thrive,” Le Duc said. “It’s not just surviving an incident, but learning from it and reducing future impacts.”
To build resilience, the first step is simple: educate yourself. Knowing to “drop, cover and hold on” is a great start. More than that, Le Duc encourages everyone to see it as an opportunity to lead.
“Be a leader,” he said. “Drop, cover, hold on, and then educate others. We need to take care of everybody, and that happens one individual at a time.”
It’s important to remember that ShakeOut is a starting point, not a finish line. Every professional I spoke to emphasized that resilience is a practice, one that can be strengthened over time. For students looking to learn more, or for those who may be a part of the next generation of geoscientists, there’s much more to learn.
Learn more about CRESENT at cascadiaquakes.org, or visit the university’s Oregon Hazards Research Lab at ohaz.uoregon.edu.
