Early this winter I went on a writer’s retreat on the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington State. For a weekend, we shared a house that was only a short walk from the beach separated by sand dunes. It’s an idyllic spot. We played writing games and ate good meals and took long walks on the sand. One morning I went out and saw a Bald Eagle sitting alone near the surf. Another friend saw some deer. Most of us were journalists who wrote—at least sometimes—about the environment and climate change. On our first walk while I was noticing the trees and smelling the salt air, one person took note of the tsunami evacuation zone signs nearby and that there was a hill not too far away: higher ground. She said she’d been hesitant to come because of where the house was located. If a tsunami hit, we might not escape in time.
At the time I filed this away as a fun quirk of traveling with people who reported on these issues and got too much in their heads. Lately I’ve started believing this is how we should all think about places where we live and travel to.
Much has been written about the Cascadia subduction zone—an area where two of the earth’s plates are pushing on each other and will eventually cause a huge earthquake. Kathryn Schulz wrote about it terrifyingly for The New Yorker in 2015:
“When the next very big earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from California to Canada and the continental shelf to the Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west—losing, within minutes, all the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries. Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean, displacing a colossal quantity of seawater. (Watch what your fingertips do when you flatten your hand.) The water will surge upward into a huge hill, then promptly collapse. One side will rush west, toward Japan. The other side will rush east, in a seven-hundred-mile liquid wall that will reach the Northwest coast, on average, fifteen minutes after the earthquake begins. By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable.”
The last Cascadia earthquake happened 324 years ago and they occur every 300-500 years. Current estimates put the chance of another one within the next 50 years at 37%. It may not happen in our lifetimes—but it could.
As I’m writing this, Hurricane Milton has just made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused flooding and devastation that people will be recovering from for months or years. As the AP said, “veteran hurricane scientists [call this] the weirdest storm system of their lives.”
But no matter how much damage Milton does, countless lives will have been saved because people evacuated and knew how to prepare before the storm came. It’s a lot easier for humans to do that when we’re given a 72-hour or 48- or 24-hour warnings and can see the storm approaching on a tracker; it’s harder with something like an earthquake or fire or heat wave or power outage that could come, will probably come, but may not affect us at all.
A lot of people who don’t want to think about these things. I often hear people brush off concerns like this as “refusing to live my life in fear.” But there’s a difference between fear and preparation. In states with regular hurricanes or tsunamis, there are warning systems in place to keep people safe. (If you live in a place that needs better public warning systems or want to know what they are, this is a great time to contact your local officials.) Everyone knows how to evacuate when trouble hits.
There are emergency notifications for phones that will sound an alert as soon as serious seismic activity is detected. Some areas do have tsunami alert systems that sound a three-minute tone to indicate people should go—on foot—to higher ground immediately. But phone alerts don’t work if your phone is off or too far away to hear them. And not everywhere with tsunami risk has tsunami sirens—especially on secluded beaches or in parks or wilderness areas.
One way to know a tsunami is on the way is to look at a sudden change in sea level. If you’re at the beach and suddenly the water is many feet farther away from you than it was before, get to high ground immediately. I didn’t know that until I started writing this essay. The information doesn’t make me walk around in fear or keep me from going to the beach, but it could save my life or someone else’s life someday.
I started reading a book called The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why after my friend and fellow author,
, mentioned it. (Emma’s debut novel Tilt comes out in March and you should preorder it immediately.)The Unthinkable is about what our brains do during a disaster and how that can both help or hinder our survival. It’s a fascinating book that I recommend reading. So far I’ve had two major takeaways.
1. Your survival in a disaster is based on you and the people around you, because first responders cannot be there immediately.
2. Preparing for emergency is the best way to survive an emergency.
The second might be as simple as actually paying attention to exit routes and locations or—as my friend did at the peninsula—taking note of nearby high ground. It might mean making a plan for where you’d meet family members if there was ever an emergency that made cell communication impossible. It means storing non-perishable food, water, and medical supplies to the extent that you have money and room to store them: some is better than none. It means getting to know your neighbors now because they will be the ones you lean on—for information if nothing else—if and when there’s a local emergency. (If you’re a homeowner, this is a reminder to check your insurance to make sure you’re covered for things like flooding or earthquakes or other disasters with even a small chance of occurring where you live.)
With climate change making natural disasters more frequent and more destructive, not even “climate havens” are completely safe and risk-free. (Localized problems like house fires, flooding, or power outages can still affect us even when the weather doesn’t.)
I won’t stop going to the coast or places like the Long Beach Peninsula on the off chance that a catastrophic every-300-to-500-year earthquake and tsunami might hit on exactly that day. (Though I won’t be buying real estate there). But I’ll pay more attention to tsunami signs now and look for the nearest high ground.
Be aware, help your neighbors: the best time to prepare is now.
Notes
It’s a big news week here at Chez Danovich.
I was thrilled that Emergence Magazine took and published an essay I wrote about Portland’s swifts who I adore. I hope you’ll give it a read. I’ve been exploring more and trying new things in my essays and am proud of how this turned out.
The article I wrote for The Atlantic on concussions was listed as a notable work by The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024. Thank you so much to the editors for giving the piece this nod.
Last week, I got to be a guest in a writing class at my old high school and answer questions for students about being a working writer in the world. I can’t express how much I loved doing this—I hope the students got something out of it too. I might write more about this in the future. If you teach writing students—of any age—and want a class guest to speak with them, please reach out.
I read Julia Phillips’ new book Bear which is about two sisters living on San Juan Island in the Pacific Northwest, enough to put it on my list immediately. There are descriptions of beautiful wilderness and ferry boat rides and a lot about class and money. It was a great quick read and is based on the fairy tale “Snow White and Rose Red”. Add it to your TBR lists.
Because all writers have a never-ending hope of finding ways to make writing financially sustainable, I’ve opened a Bookshop.org affiliate page. If you buy any of the books I mention in this newsletter, I will get a small commission.
You can directly support my work by getting a paid subscription to A Little Detour or buying a copy of my book Under the Henfluence.
i thought that photo looked familiar! and thanks for the reminder to actually put my earthquake go-bag back together; i've been putting that off for way too long.
This was such a good read, thank you! It ties in with all the disaster news I’ve been reading and working on writing about.