Magnitude 9.0+ Earthquake Headed for Oregon?
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Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Zach Middleton, GoLocalPDX Contributor
What would you do if you were woken up in the night by a major earthquake, and then looked out your window to see a 10-story tall wall of water headed straight for your building?
That’s the question the millions of residents of the Pacific Northwest should be asking themselves, according to a recent article in The New Yorker.
“An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when,” begins the new article written by Kathryn Schulz.
The damage caused by this massive earthquake and the ensuing tsunami would be catastrophic: twenty-seven thousand injured, almost thirteen thousand dead. However, that’s just the damage from the event itself. Loss of power, drinking water, chemical spills, fires, and other problems in the time after the event could make those numbers much higher. Fifteen of Portland's seventeen bridges would also likely be destroyed.
Unfortunately, the article warns, much of the Pacific Northwest is completely unprepared for a major earthquake. Many of our local buildings were built before modern earthquake safety codes. Coastal towns will be almost impossible to save as they are primarily built on “inundation zones,” or areas the tsunami would completely destroy.
What’s the time frame on such a devastating event? No one can really say for sure. Paleoseismologist Chris Goldfinger says we are overdue for “the really big one” by as much as 100 years. There have been no warning signs that it will happen soon, and in geologic terms, 100 years isn't that long. However, if the “really big one” does happen soon, no one can say we weren’t warned.
Related Slideshow: Oregon’s Disturbing History of Coastal Killers
Oregon's Coast is no stranger to some disturbing homicides cases.
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Christian Michael Longo
Christian Michael Longo was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his wife and three children. Their bodies were found in costal waterways near Newport shortly before Christmas, 2001.
Longo was arrested in Mexico where he was impersonating a travel writer about a month after the killings of his wife and three young children, ages 2,3 and 4. He made the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list after disappearing days after the gruesome discovery of his family’s bodies. His wife and youngest daughter were found in suitcases under a dock of a marina near the family’s house.
Prosecutors argued the murders were premeditated and that amid financial and marital troubles, Longo wanted out.
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Edward Paul Morris
Under the guise of a surprise trip to the Tillamook Forest in 2002 near the Oregon Coast, Edward Paul Morris instead shot and killed his entire family along Route 6. Morris was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for killing his pregnant wife and their three children, ages 10, 8 and 4.
After a two-week hunt for Morris, he was arrested without incident.
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Troy Culver
Twenty years after 16-year-old Walter Thomas Ackerson, Jr. went missing, his killer confessed to beating and throwing his body off a bridge. Ackerson was killed in 1990 after taking a leave from the Angell Job Corps in Yachats with three other students. One of the students, Troy Culver, admitted 20 years after Ackerson was considered missing, that he beat and killed the teen. The three boys then tossed him over a bridge.
Culver was sentenced to 10 years in prison while the other two students received immunity for their testimonies.
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Horacio Alberto Reyes-Cam
Horacio Alberto Reyes-Camarena stabbed Maria Zetina and her sister, Angelica Zetina, and dumped their bodies along U.S. 101 near the Oregon coast. But Angelica survived and was able to identify her attacker, who was given the death penalty in 1997.
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Charley Brennan
The Main Street Bakery in Myrtle Point became the site of a bloody axe murder in 1930. Hazel McGee was found dead by a salesman who entered the bakery and then found a young woman dead in her apartment upstairs, a blood-soaked axe nearby. Police later discovered that McGee, 24, had been seen kissing bakery owner Charley Brennan.
Shortly after police listed Brennan as a suspect, a fisherman found his body on the Couquille River. His death was ruled an apparent suicide.
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Coleman Gillespie
Coleman Gillespie was hanged in 1900 in Curry County after killing, robbing and setting on fire the house of Christina Edson.
Gillespie told police he choked Edson until she gave up her pension checks for $11.75 and $75. After that he choked her to death, ate supper and torched the victim's house.
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David Joseph Pedersen and
Two white supremacists were charged in 2011 with killing and taking the car of an Oregon teen who went missing on a trip to Newport. His body was later found in the woods of western Oregon. David Joseph Pedersen and his girlfriend, Holly Grigsby, were charged after their “reign of terror” on a trip down the West Coast during which they killed three others in Washington and California, in addition to the 19-year-old from Oregon.
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Anthony Paul "Tony" Mulli
Dorene Raterman, just 15 years old, was killed less than a mile from her home after biking to Del Ray Beach. Anthony Paul Tony Mullins was sentenced to life in prison after admitting to Raterman's murder and kidnapping. Tiac Eastman, who worked with Mullins as a dishwasher at a motel in Seaside and was with him the night of Raterman’s murder, was also charged with hindering the prosecution.
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The Coastal Killer Bobby
The Coastal Killer Bobby Jack Fowler died in an Oregon prison where he was serving time for rape and kidnapping. But he has been linked to two murders of Oregon teenagers in Newport as well as three “Highway of Tears” cases in British Columbia, Canada where 18 women vanished from B.C. highways from 1969 to 2006.
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Girley Logsdon Crum Jr.
Girley Logsdon Crum Jr. was charged in 1996 with murdering a family in a mobile home park in the small coastal town of Bandon. Crum had just been released from a parole violation before killing a couple, their two children and the woman’s brother. Crum had previously been arrested for robbing someone with a screwdriver.
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