the earthquake takes 100 seconds to unzip. so this earthquake didn t happen all at once like you might think. the fault unzipped over a period of 100 seconds, and during those 100 seconds, we have a pretty complicated pattern of shake, so that s what your eyewitness reporters are telling us and we can confirm that request the seismographs and the equipment that records the earthquakes. i know you re not a sooth sayer, but our resident colleague predicts that we ll have one of these huge earthquakes on the west coast of the united states in our lifetime. and what s the official position of the u.s. geological survey. i can give you a clear answer on that. the last earthquake of this size that occurred in the united states was in 1700 in january. and we know that well from the records of the tsunami that
undersea landslides that could have happened to cause even more disruption of the water. here s what we expect. here s where the trench is. and what we have, we have a couple of plates that come together. one going down and one landing on top. dr. frankel, come on over here just for a second. we have this is my phone a friend. i just dr. fringeankel from georgia. good morning. i m trying to describe what happened here along this trench, along where one plate has met the other and where this actually, because it was actually underground by, what, 20 miles? 20 miles, yeah. so this earthquake didn t happen right along the trench, as we know it. right, along the plate interface. along the interface of where this part of this plate now meets this plate here. so this one is subducting down beneath this one. and this is locked, most of the time. and then when that earthquake