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A strong earthquake struck the waters off the Oregon coast Thursday morning.
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The magnitude 6.3 earthquake was registered 184 miles west of Coos Bay, at 8:08 a.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
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This area of the country has been expecting a major earthquake for years. A 2015 New Yorker report detailed just how unprepared Oregon’s infrastructure was for the “big one.”
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A strong earthquake rocked the waters off the coast of Oregon Thursday morning, in a region that has been anxiously bracing for a major earthquake.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake happened about 184 miles west of Coos Bay at 8:08 a.m. local time. It registered a 6.3 on the Richter scale, classifying it as a strong earthquake. No tsunami was expected, the US Tsunami Warning System said.
The earthquake happened in an area off the Oregon coast known as the Cascadia subduction zone. In 2015, New Yorker reporter Kathryn Schulz detailed how the fault line was overdue for a major earthquake.
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USGS
The fault line has a major earthquake about once every 243 years, and it’s been about 320 years since the last major one.
The article also detailed how vastly unprepared Oregon’s infrastructure was for such a major quake.
Kenneth Murphy, the FEMA director for the region, told the magazine that the “operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”
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