Supply Chain Resilience : Push and Pull in Catastrophes
and channels ( so far ) and the power of demand to stimulate and sustain flow . How does this inform strategic options for a very different sort of disruptive event , such as a huge earthquake ?
Supply Chain Resilience and a Cascadia Megathrust Event
On January 26 , 1700 , one of the most powerful earthquakes known displaced the earth ’ s surface from at least the Columbia River to Vancouver Island . The Cascadia Subduction Zone ( CSZ ) is where three remnants of the primordial Farallon plate are bending beneath the much larger North American plate . Subduction faults produce the planet ’ s most destructive seismic shifts . Several studies suggest a recurrence pattern for magnitude 8.0 and above that ranges between 250 and 500 years . 18 A CSZ Event is not the only catastrophic threat to the Puget Sound region . 19 But a Cascadia event ’ s wide-area physical consequences will be especially challenging for demand and supply networks .
The M9 Project at the University of Washington has simulated fifty Cascadia scenarios . 20 Consequences vary considerably depending on several variables , especially the location of the epicenter . 21 Even after it happens — and with after-shocks , keeps happening — the strategic context will remain uncertain for a considerable time . But projections and estimations are dire . A 2015 piece in The New Yorker describes a generally accepted “ big picture .”
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 .... 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 . 22
Depending on point of origin , Cascadia event seismic waves will cause long-duration shaking ( perhaps up to six minutes ). This is tough on everything
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