[109] It extends as far east as (and probably terminates at) the Rattlesnake Mountain Fault Zone (RMFZ; the southern extension of the SWIF) near Fall City. At the northern end the right-lateral McMurray Fault Zone (MFZ) straddles Lake McMurray, just south of the Devils Mountain Fault, and is suspected of being a major bounding fault. [47], To the southeast the SWIF passes through Admiralty Inlet (past Port Townsend) and across the southern part of Whidbey Island, crossing to the mainland between Mukilteo and Edmonds. About 1,100 years ago, a major earthquake rocked Puget Sound, suddenly shooting what is now Restoration Point on Bainbridge Island up about 23 feet while Seattle 's West Point sunk more than. All this is explained by right-lateral strike-slip motion on the Straight Creek Fault, which initiated about 50 to 48 Ma (millions of years ago). This is only one of a series of active large crustal faults in the Puget Lowland. However, an enormous threat lurks just off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. and Fault Location. (Links with more information on various hazards can be found at Seattle Fault.). The energy released depends on the length of the fault; the faults here are believed capable of generating earthquakes as great as M 6 or 7. American Spirit Cruise Reviews - Cruise Critic 0 magnitude subduction earthquake off the Washington coast would generate a tsunami capable of submerging not only coastal areas but also most of the Puget Sound shoreline . Some of these faults possibly developed in the Mesozoic, when these deposits were in the accretionary wedge;[72] the cross-cutting NE and NNE-striking faults that form the various basins resulted from a subsequent change to transtension. . Review for American Constellation to U.S.A. chatuga. Detailed mapping of this area since 2006 has revealed a complex pattern of faults. The Seattle fault zone is where the forward edge of the slab, coming to the top of the ramp, breaks and slips into the Seattle Basin. The apparent gap north of Riffe Lake is possibly due to obscuration by volcanic deposits of the Northcraft Formation. North Olympic Peninsula VA Clinic at VA Puget Sound health care, 360-565-7420. The Puget Sound Region is crisscrossed by fault lines and zones and also located close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where the Juan de Fuca and North American tectonic plates meet. According to the preeminent model, the "Puget Lowland thrust sheet hypothesis",[26] these faults, etc., occur within a sheet of crust about 14 to 20km deep that has separated from and is being thrust over deeper crustal blocks. However, the SWCC is relatively shallow (no more than 15 km deep), and likely is draped over pre-Tertiary bedrock. 1 - 10 of 77 American Spirit Cruise Reviews. See Snavely et al. The first item on your list though is the fault of builders and nobody else. [193] The SHZ and WRZ lie just outside the topographical basin that constitutes the Puget Lowland (see image), do not participate in the uplift and basin pattern, and unlike the rest of the faults in the Puget Lowland (which are reverse or thrust faults reflecting mostly compressive forces) they appear to be strike-slip faults; they reflect a geological context distinctly different from the rest of the Puget Lowland. The Seattle Fault is a zone of complex thrust and reverse faults between lines E and F on the map up to 7km wide and over 70km long that delineates the north edge of the Seattle Uplift. And like the SCF, strike-slip motion died out between 44 and 41 MA (due to plutonic intrusions). [82] Harold Tobin, a researcher at the University of Washington and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, says the fault line that caused this disaster is similar to the faults under Puget Sound. The study was. The SE striking Scammon Creek Fault seems to be terminated by the Salzer Creek Fault (the exact relationship is not clear), with the latter continuing east for another seven miles. In the angle between these is located the minor Lincoln Creek uplift, the Doty Hills, and, further west, an impressive chunk of Crescent basalt. [83], The CCFZ appears to be related to the parallel Tokul Creek fault zone to the south; both appear to be conjugate faults[84] to the northwest-trending SWIF. [120] However, the Saddle Mountain fault zone is not quite reciprocally aligned,[121] trending more northerly to where it encounters westeast trending faults (including the Hamma Hamma fault zone) that appear to be a westward extension of the Seattle Fault zone. [164] Such quakes pose a serious threat to the City of Tacoma's dams at Lake Cushman,[165] located in the fault zone,[166] and to everyone downstream on the Skokomish River. Relatively shallow crustal earthquakes, generally less than 25km (16 miles) deep, caused by stresses and faulting in the near-surface crustal structures. 09 Feb 2023 03:01:00 [40], The Southern Whidbey Island Fault (SWIF) is a significant terrane boundary manifested as an approximately four mile wide zone of complex transpressional faulting with at least three strands. [123] Other studies have faults extending NW or WNW from the SF towards Dabob Bay;[124] these are now recognized as part of the Dabob Bay fault zone. (Their model of the Black Hills Uplift is analogous with their "wedge" model of the Seattle Uplift, discussed above, but in the opposite direction. [43] Just south of Victoria, British Columbia it intersects the west-striking Devils Mountain Fault (reviewed above), and either merges with it,[44] or crosses (and possibly truncates) it to connect with the Leech River Fault. New tsunami simulation predicts flooding on Olympic Peninsula | Tacoma Just past them is the parallel Olympia Structure, which as a geophysical lineament has been traced to a point due east of Chehalis;[189] these would seem to be related somehow, but the nature of that relationship is not yet known. It is believed capable of generating earthquakes of at least magnitude 7, and there is evidence of such a quake approximately 1,000 years ago, possibly the same earthquake documented on the Seattle Fault 24 miles (38km) to the north. The Devils Mountain Fault separates two similar but distinctive ensembles of Mesozoic (pre-Tertiary, before the dinosaurs died) or older rock. The western flank of the Seattle Uplift forms a strong gravitational, aeromagnetic, and seismic velocity gradient known as the Dewatto lineament. Active tectonics of the Seattle fault and central Puget sound Tacoma's Gain is Seattle's Pain. Curiously, the extension of line "B" north of the OWL is approximately the eastern limit of Puget Sound seismicity, the rest of southwestern Washington and the North Cascades being relatively aseismic (see the seismicity map, above). [145] This is conformable with some regional tectonic interpretations[146] that put a major terrane boundary between the Olympics and the Puget Lowland, and imply a connection (either via the Discovery Bay Fault, or closer to Port Townsend) to the various faults in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The discovery was an alarm bell for engineers and emergency planners. Today's Earthquakes in Puget Sound, Washington Cheney also mapped the Lake Chaplain Fault, parallel and just east of the MVF, from Lake Chaplain to Granite Falls. The QFFDB, citing lack of consensus, ignores the eastern part. This map shows areas of seismic risk from high (red) to low (grayish-green). 5) Select plot type. [173] One reason for caution is that a detailed gravity survey was unable to resolve whether the Olympia structure is, or is not, a fault. Seismic waves transmit the energy PSE | Technical Resources for Construction - Puget Sound Energy According to the Washington state Department of Natural Resources, more than 1,000 earthquakes happen in Washington state each year! But the western segment the Devils Mountain Fault has left-lateral movement. A recent (2009) analysis of aeromagnetic data[159] suggests that it extends at least 35km, from the latitude of the Seattle Fault (the Hamma Hamma River) to about 6km south of Lake Cushman. Analysis of seismic profiles extending 50 km across the Puget Lowland from Lake Washington to Hood Canal indicates . Other faults to the south and southeast the Frigid Creek Fault and (to the west) Canyon River Fault suggest an extended zone of faulting at least 45km long. Black lines show the South Whidbey Island Fault Zone, the Seattle Fault Zone and the Tacoma Fault Zone. Gonzalez: That Seattle Fault tsunami has been modeled by others. The Devils Mountain Fault is seismically active, and there is evidence of Holocene offsets. [56] But detailed mapping just past the intersection shows only a complex and confused pattern of faulting, with no indication that there is, or is not, through-going faulting. While there is a bit of uplifted pre-Tertiary rock between the SPF and UPF, this does not truly fit the uplift and basin pattern described above because of the small scale (2km wide rather than around 20), and because the uplift here is entirely like a wedge being popped out between two nearly vertical faults, rather than being forced over a ramp such as is involved with the Seattle and Tacoma faults. We use an extensive network of marine high-resolution and conventional industry seismic-reflection data to constrain the location, shallow structure, and displacement rates of the Seattle fault zone and crosscutting high-angle faults in the Puget Lowland of western Washington. They are also on-strike with a swarm of faults on the Columbia River, bracketing The Dalles. . The DotySalzer Creek Fault does not fully fit the regional pattern of basins and uplifts bounded by faults described above. [197] This anticline, or uplifted fold, and the narrower width of the northern part of the SWCC, reflects an episode of compression of this formation. A 2001 study[148] using high-resolution seismic tomography questioned its existence. Large plumes of methane bubbles have been discovered throughout the waters of Puget Sound prompting questions about the Puget Sound food web, studies of earthquake faults and climate-change research. Whether the faulting continues eastward is not yet determined. It stands out in regard of its eastwest orientation, depth to bedrock, and hazard to an urban population center. Geographic boundaries of Puget Sound and the Salish Sea Since 2000 studies of LIDAR and high-resolution aeromagnetic data have identified scarps near Woodinville which trenching has confirmed to be tectonically derived and geologically recent. Both the SPF and UPF are said to be oblique-slip transpressional; that is, the faults show both horizontal and vertical slip as the crustal blocks are pressed together. They run . [80], In the crowded field of active or potentially active fault zones that have been discovered in the lower Snoqualmie Valley, the Cherry Creek fault zone is particularly notable because east of Duvall[81] it passes through a hotspot of active seismicity, including the 1996 '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000057-QINU`"'ML 5.3 Duvall earthquake. Here the main strand on the western edge merges with the Sultan River Fault under the Sultan River. [160] The Canyon River Fault is a major fault in itself, associated with a 40km long lineament and distinct late Holocene scarps of up to 3 meters.[161]. WASHINGTON: Methane Bubbles Up From Seafloor Near Seattle PNSN staff will continue to develop this section of the web site but to find more good information now, visit these resources: These include the: Southern Whidbey Island Fault (SWIF) Seattle Fault Devils Mountain Fault Strawberry Point fault Utsalady Point fault Calawah fault Barnes Creek ), Aeromagnetic mapping in 1999 showed a very prominent anomaly[172] (such as typically indicates a contrast of rock type); that, along with paleoseismological evidence of a major Holocene earthquake, has led to a suggestion that this structure "may be associated with faulting". [178] Alternately, the OS appears to coincide with a gravitational boundary in the upper crust that has been mapped striking southeast to The Dalles on the Columbia River,[179] where there is a swarm of similarly striking faults. [70] Although the intervening section has not been mapped, geologists believe the GFFZ connects with the McMurray FZ to the north, and forms the eastern boundary of the Everett Basin. It is not notably seismogenic. The Olympia structure also known as the Legislature fault[168] is an 80km long gravitational and aeromagnetic anomaly that separates the sedimentary deposits of the Tacoma Basin from the basalt of the Black Hills Uplift (between lines A and B on the map). [158] Vertical movement on these faults has created prominent scarps that have dammed Price Lake and (just north of Saddle Mountain) Lilliwaup Swamp. [218] This would pose significantly greater seismic hazard than currently recognized, especially as the White River Fault is believed to connect with the Naches River Fault that extends along Highway 410 on the east side of the Cascades towards Yakima. [103] Other seismic tomography has tantalizingly suggested three north-striking strands under Seattle, and a fourth just east of Lake Washington. Based on this and geophysical anomalies it was inferred that there is a major, active strike-slip fault zone running from the south end of Hood Canal, up Dabob Bay, and continuing north on land. Earthquake - King County Although the largely unstudied White River Fault (WRF) appears to lie just outside the Puget Lowland, it may actually connect under the Muckleshoot Basin to the East Passage Zone and the Tacoma Fault (map). [182], The Doty Fault the southernmost of the uplift-and-basin dividing faults reviewed here, and located just north of the Chehalis Basin is one of nearly a dozen faults mapped in the CentraliaChehalis coal district in 1958. This map of Puget Sound shows the location of the methane plumes (yellow and white circles) detected along the ship's path (purple). [119] Several studies show that the southernmost strand of the SF, once past Green Mountain, turns southwest, towards the Saddle Mountain and Frigid Creek faults. They interpreted it as "simple folds in Eocene bedrock", though Sherrod (1998) saw sufficient similarity with the Seattle Fault to speculate that this is a thrust fault. There are other tsunami scenarios that are not accounted for in these maps, such as tsunamis caused by . Next to a 4-6 lines highways with 90db noise and cancerous pollution. Bubbles of methane rising from seafloor in Puget Sound 1958 and Geologic Map GM-34 for details.). PNSN Recent Events | Pacific Northwest Seismic Network This is being obliquely overridden by the North American plate coming out of the northeast, which has formed a bend in the subducting plate and in the forearc basin above it. Just four miles (6km) south the city of Oak Harbor straddles several stands of the Utsalady Point Fault (UPF) as they head roughly east-southeast towards Utsalady Point at the north end of Camano Island. Initially it was not specified, and rather vaguely indicated to be west of Restoration Point (i.e., west of Puget Sound). [32] And it is suggested that the Great Seattle Quake of approximately 1,100 years ago, and other coseismic events in southern Puget Sound around that time, were a single event that affected this entire block, with a magnitude of around 8, possibly triggered by an earthquake deeper in the crust.[33]. [91] The relationship between these two fault zones is not entirely clear. 14 earthquakes in the past 30 days. In this model the Tacoma fault zone is primarily the result of local adjustments as the slab bends upward at the bottom of the ramp. There are some interesting relationships here. KUOW Public Radio on Twitter: "A UW researcher says the fault line that [143] Such interconnection also suggests a capability for larger earthquakes (> M7 for the Seattle Fault); the amount of increased risk is unknown.[144]. The ultimate driver of the stresses that cause earthquakes are the motions of the tectonic plates: material from the Earth's mantle rises at spreading centers, and moves out as plates of oceanic crust which eventually are subducted under the more buoyant plates of continental crust. Analyze Instructions: Close. Five Puget Sound cities likely to feel strong shaking in a megaquake It appears that the Seattle Uplift is acting as a rigid block, with the Tacoma, Dewatto, and Seattle faults being the southern, western, and northern faces. American Seattle Cruise Reviews - Cruise Critic Another model (of Stanley, Villaseor & Benz 1999, USGS Open-File Report 990311) not so much in competition with the first as complementing it used seismic and other data to create a 3-D tectonic model of the whole crust; this was then analyzed using finite element methods to determine regional geodynamic characteristics. external structure, lines, and riggings; stand deck watches, such as helmsman and lookout underway; stand pier sentry, fire security, anchor, and . Washington's faults: Where the Earth moves the Seattle area Sail Date: October 2022 . Energy builds up as elastic strain in rocks. Those Hollywood depictions of a. Geologic Map. The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest But. For the following reviews the primary source of information is the U.S. Geological Survey's Quaternary fault and fold database (QFFDB), which includes details of discovery, a technical description, and bibliography for each fault; a specific link is provided (where available) at the end of each section. The maps show slightly lower . Prior to 2000, prominent aeromagnetic anomalies strongly suggested that the fault zone continued southeast, perhaps as far as the town of Duvall, but this was uncertain as the SWIF is largely concealed, and the faint surface traces generally obliterated by urban development. [100], However, gravity and other data suggest that near the southern tip of Whidbey Island the Crescent Formation contact may turn away from the SWIF, and may even be reentrant under north Seattle,[101] forming the northwestern side of the Seattle Basin, and possibly connecting with the recently reported "Bremerton trend" of faulting running from the southern end of Hood Canal, through Sinclair Inlet (Bremerton), and across Puget Sound. ecc.kc@kingcounty.gov. This follows the front of the Rosedale monocline, a gently southwest-tilting formation that forms the bluffs on which Tacoma is built. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Puget_Sound_faults&oldid=1132982136, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, A great subduction earthquake, such as the. News Media at VA Puget Sound health care, 206-764-2435, 206-764-2317. Black squares are urban sewer outfalls, which don't match the bubble plumes' locations. It is believed that all of these faults, folds, basins, and uplifts are related. Hood Canal marks an abrupt change of physiography between the Puget Lowland and the Olympic Mountains to the west. . (Not included in QFFDB. 112 earthquakes in the past 365 days. [114] An early view was that "the Seattle Fault appears to be truncated by the Hood Canal fault and does not extend into the Olympic Mountains". I've been in the business for 20 years and the way skilled labor has been treated up until very recently drove a ton of people away from the industry. Puget Sound Lidar Consortium Finding faults scarp(n). [133] The Tacoma fault was initially suspected of following a weak magnetic anomaly west to the Frigid Creek fault,[127] but is now believed to connect with a steep gravitational, aeromagnetic, and seismic velocity gradient that strikes north towards Green Mountain (Blue Hills uplift). According to the recent seismological studies, the Seattle Fault is believed to be a zone of thrust or reverse faults that strikes through Seattle in the densely populated Puget Lowland of western Washington (Johnson et al., 1999). It therefore seems reasonable that the rest of the SWIF (and its apparent extension, the RMFZ) follows the Coast RangeCascade contact, and (these faults being active) constitutes the CRBF. On the north is the HelenaHaystack mlange (HH mlange, purple in the diagram at right), on the south the Western and Eastern mlange belts (WEMB, blue). The Woods Lake Fault, running past Lake Chaplain, corresponds closest to the mapped position of the southern end of Cheney's Mount Vernon Fault. There is a general pattern where most of these faults partition a series of basins and uplifts, each about 20km wide. This ramp could be either in the lower crustal blocks, or where the thrust sheet has split and one part is being forced over the next. [62] These ridges (part of a broader regional pattern that reflects the roots of the former Calkins Range[63]) are formed of sediments that collected in the Everett basin during the Eocene, and were subsequently folded by northeast-directed compression against the older Cretaceous and Jurassic rock to the east that bound the Puget Lowland. Here, the Cherry Creek and Tokul Creek faults zones on the east side of the RMFZ are conjugate to the SWIF on the west side. [187] Such a length would be comparable to the length of the Seattle or Tacoma faults, and capable of an earthquake of M 6.7. The northern end of the Crescent Formation (aka Metchosin Formation) has been identified as the eastwest trending Leech River Fault on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Turkey's fault line is similar to faults under Puget Sound Earthquake Fault Maps in Seattle and Washington State Clearance, service lines and meter locations. Though the Olympia Structure (a suspected fault) runs towards the SHZ, and delineates the northern edge of an exposed section of the Crescent Formation, it appears to be an upper crustal fold, part of a pattern of folding that extends southeast to cross the Columbia River near The Dalles, and unrelated to the mid and lower crustal SHZ. [195] The southwestern boundary of the SWCC, where it is believed to be in near vertical contact with the Eocene basalts of the Crescent Formation, forms a good part of the 90km (56 mile) long SHZ. Publication Year: 2010: Title: A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the Tacoma Fault Zone A plausible scenario for the southern Puget Sound region, Washington: DOI: 10.3133/fs20103023: Authors: These are usually fairly short, and not believed to be significantly seismogenic. Puget Sound Energy. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. There is evidence that the Tacoma Fault connects with the White River River Fault (WRF) via the EPZ and Federal Way, under the Muckleshoot Basin (see map),[137] and thence to the Naches River Fault. [96] As the juxtaposition of various disparate tectonic structures in northwest Washington requires significant strike-slip movement, it is further expected that this contact will be a major fault.[97]. 182-3]", "Western limits of the Seattle fault zone and its interaction with the Olympic Peninsula, Washington", "Seismic reflection imaging across the eastern portions of the Tacoma fault zone", "The western extension of the Seattle fault: new insights from seismic reflection data", "Seismic Characterization of the Seattle and Southern Whidbey Island Fault Zones in the Snoqualmie River Valley, Washington", "Fault number 552, Hood Canal fault zone", "Radiocarbon Ages of Probable Coseismic Features from the Olympic Peninsula and Lake Sammamish, Washington", "Geologic map of the Summit Lake 7.5-minute quadrangle, Thurston and Mason Counties, Washington", "The Olympia structure; ramp or discontinuity? Most of this thrust sheet consists of the Crescent Formation (corresponding to the Siletz River volcanics in Oregon and Metchosin Formation on Vancouver Island), a vast outpouring of volcanic basalt from the Eocene epoch (about 50 million years ago), with an origin variously attributed to a seamount chain, or continental margin rifting (see Siletzia). Especially as seismic reflection data[135] shows some faulting continuing east across Vashon Island and the East Passage of Puget Sound (the East Passage Zone, EPZ) towards Federal Way and an east-striking anticline.