The End of the World Notwithstanding by Janna L. Goodwin

Author:Janna L. Goodwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2021-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

When it does, though (and, because strong evidence has been uncovered indicating past, periodic oceanic quakes and tsunamis in the region, the thinking goes that it certainly will), there won’t be much warning. Communities up and down the coast and inland will be washed away; others, substantially shaken. Seattle’s waterfront may be—get this—liquefied. Liquefaction means that the vibrations caused by the quake result in solid ground behaving like quicksand: highways and structures sink into it. Olympia, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, and Salem will all be wrecked. This “Big One” could/would/will be far more devastating than anything the infamous San Andreas—a mere “strike-slip” fault, where plates slide past one another—might serve up.

Traveling to Long Beach from Astoria, you first pass a headland called Cape Disappointment, where explorers before Louis and Clark once looked for and found the mouth of the Columbia but mistook it for just another stupid bay. Aww, they tweeted before leaving to continue their search, Just another stupid bay! #Disappointed. Coming down onto the peninsula, you pass signs depicting a person running from a giant wave. Tsunami Hazard Zone, the signs warn, and Tsunami Evacuation Route. When you enter the town proper, frantically scanning for elevation, you note that there is none. Everything is flat, flat, flat. It is hard to see how this place isn’t already underwater. Your motel is on a flat stretch of flat land leading to the very long, very wide, flat beach. The motel clerk, the housekeepers pushing carts between buildings, the kids on skateboards in the parking lot all strike you as oblivious. Several girls on horses gallop between you and the breakers, shouting gleefully, unaware of what is about to happen.

A boardwalk and trail run for miles through the dunes. After you’ve unpacked your bags, you saunter along it at a restrained pace meant to suggest—mainly to yourself—that you are a carefree person, one hundred percent free of care. You have dinner at a restaurant that you chose for its second-floor deck, from which you can keep a close eye on the water as you eat. In the room, you are mindful of tremors. Lying in bed next to your husband, you devour as much of The Next Tsunami as you can handle, dropping off during a relatively safe part of the narrative, when the scientists are at a conference at the University of Washington, discussing their findings.

I finished the book the next morning before we’d even had our coffee. Then, as we poked around the peninsula, I mentally designed things that might be climbed onto in case of a tsunami. One of these ideas resembled the Space Needle. I knew it would be an addition to Long Beach’s low skyline that everyone, locals and visitors alike, would appreciate when the time came. There would be an elevator inside and circular stairs around the outside (so more people could get up to the top rapidly in a tidal wave event). The large disc at the top would hold one hundred occupants (arbitrary, but easy to remember).

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