About This Book

The third edition, updated nearly three decades later, tells the earthquake story of the Pacific Northwest. (This includes the west coast of Canada, and perhaps from a Canadian perspective, it should be the Pacific Southwest.) The book presents the evidence for earthquakes, the location of major faults, the danger from tsunamis, the importance of ground conditions, and what we as individuals and as taxpayers and voters can do to make our homes and our communities safer from earthquakes. There are lessons from the Northwest experience to be learned elsewhere in the United States, Canada, and other parts of the world where the earthquake threat is greater than that perceived by the general public.