What The Heck Is Liquefaction?
As you might imagine, we’ve been talking a lot about earthquakes lately, especially the risk of a Cascadia subduction zone quake right here in Oregon.
One word that has come up over and over again is “liquefaction” which, I’m not gonna lie, I had never heard of before.
Assuming that you, like me, 1. are unfamiliar and 2. like to learn new things, this post should serve as a visual tutorial to help you better understand the topic.
First, a definition from the USGS:
liquefaction
A process by which water-saturated sediment temporarily loses strength and acts as a fluid, like when you wiggle your toes in the wet sand near the water at the beach. This effect can be caused by earthquake shaking.
And now, a video of how liquefaction works:
And now, a video of liquefaction in action [scary!]:
And NOW, you can pat yourself on the back for learning something new about earthquakes!
P.S. Why should we worry about liquefaction? It goes without saying that Oregon’s a pretty wet place (What do you call two days of rain in Oregon? A weekend.) and our ground is soggier than most. And anything that goes in that ground, like those houses on stilts we see in the West Hills, has a good likelihood of coming straight down. Yikes.
2 comments
A lot of what we know about liquefaction actually comes from the Mt. St. Helens event. Which… is not that far from us. Often the liquefaction can be the most disastrous part of a volcanic eruption.
The more you know!
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