Most Powerful Quake in 40 Years Triggers Death and Destruction. The 8.9-magnitude quake was centered off Sumatra, Indonesia. The death toll, now put at 7,000, was expected to rise dramatically. By By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON. [NYT > Home Page]
Somehow, I can't bring myself to use the offical term and call this a "great" earthquake. For something this massive and deadly, "great" is the wrong term.
Based on the distribution of aftershocks, some as large as 7.3, the rupture zone is around 700 miles long. A comparable rupture on the San Andreas Fault would run from San Francisco to the Mexican border. Fortunately for us, such a rupture is probably impossible, since there are too may kinks and turns in the fault.
On the other hand, a comparable rupture is possible on the Cascadia subduction zone, which runs from northern California to Canada. In 1700, this fault produced an estimated magnitude 9 earthquake and generated a tsunami that impacted Japan. Few people lived in the Pacific Northwest then. A similar earthquake today, would affect over 1 million people living there and tsunamis could impact the entire west coast, Hawaii, and Japan.
10:43:44 AM 
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