The Cascadia Region stretches from Brooks Peninsula on Vancouver Island, British Columbia in the north to Cape Mendocino, California in the south. Our member states and province are British Columbia, California, Oregon and Washington.
The Cascadia Region has experienced several types of earthquakes and is likely to experience similar events in the future. Cascadia earthquakes fall into three major categories:
• Shallow, or crustal earthquakes, such as the Scotts Mills earthquake (1993) in Oregon’s Willamette Valley
• Deep, or intraplate earthquakes, such as the Nisqually earthquake (2001) in the Puget Sound area of western Washington
• Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes, which could occur offshore the entire region
In addition, distant earthquakes occurring elsewhere around the Pacific Basin create tsunamis that impact the coastlines of British Columbia, California, Oregon and Washington several hours later. The Tohoku earthquake that devastated Japan in 2011 was, to Cascadia residents, a distant earthquake.
Learn more about the different types of Cascadia earthquakes