The Tsunami Could Kill Thousands. Can They Build An Escape?

OCEAN SHORES, Wash. — The 350 children at Ocean Shores Elementary School have practiced their earthquake survival plans, dropping under desks to ride out the convulsions, then racing upstairs to the second floor to await the coming tsunami.

Unless something changes, their preparations will most likely be futile.

The Cascadia fault off the Pacific Northwest coast is poised for a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake at some point, scientists say, a rupture that would propel a wall of water across much of the Northwest coast within minutes. Low-lying coastal neighborhoods in Washington, Oregon and Northern California would be under 10 feet or more of water, with the elementary school in Ocean Shores facing an inundation that could be 23 feet deep.

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The second-floor refuge that students rush to in their drills stands 13 feet off the ground — in a structure that was not built to withstand a raging tsunami.

“The fact of the matter is that if a tsunami occurs tomorrow, we are going to lose all of our children,” said Andrew Kelly, superintendent of the North Beach School District, which includes Ocean Shores. Kelly is one of a growing number of officials who are calling for a network of elevated buildings and platforms along the Northwest coast that could provide an escape for thousands of people who might otherwise be doomed in the event of a tsunami.

On Tuesday, voters in Ocean Shores and neighboring communities will decide whether to approve a bond measure that would, in part, build new vertical additions at two schools, offering students and nearby residents a place to flee from a surging ocean.

Scientists have been warning for years that another catastrophic quake could erupt at any time in the Cascadia subduction zone, a 600-mile-long “megathrust” fault that stretches from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, to Cape Mendocino, California.

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