Acehtsunami

The major earthquakes that destroyed Chile earlier this year and which generated the catastrophic Indonesian tsunami of 2004 are more than just a distinct chance to strike the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States, scientists say.

There is more than a one-in-three possibility that it will happen within the next 50 years.
New analyses by Oregon State University marine geologist Chris Goldfinger and his colleagues have supplied fresh insights into the Northwest’s turbulent seismic history — where magnitude 8.2 (or higher) earthquakes have occurred 41 times during the past 10,000 years.

Those earthquakes were thought to generally occur every 500 years, but as scientists probe more deeply into the offshore sediments and other evidence, they have discovered a great deal more complexity to the Cascadia Subduction Zone.