Scientists recently announced a terrifying find: A megaquake on the fearsome Cascadia fault in the Pacific Northwest could trigger a huge tremor on the San Andreas fault — essentially back-to-back megaquakes that would send destructive seismic waves up and down the West Coast, including the Bay Area.
But one of the key scientists said there’s a surprising upside to knowing about the linkage: “If Cascadia went off, it would serve as a warning system to the Bay Area,” said Chris Goldfinger, lead author of the study and Bay Area native.
An Oregon State University marine geologist, Goldfinger has spent decades studying the Cascadia subduction zone, which runs from Vancouver Island, Canada, to Cape Mendocino in Northern California, where it meets the northern San Andreas fault.
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The fault has a 37% chance of producing a quake of around magnitude 7 or higher in the next half-century, Goldfinger and his authors found. It’s also capable of setting off a magnitude 9+ quake — the strength at which it last erupted in 1700…