B4
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, JULY 17, 2021
Researchers seek answers on origins for Cascadia event
By TOM BANSE
Northwest News Network
Earthquake researchers
are eager to dig into a trove of
new data about the off shore
Cascadia fault zone. When
Cascadia ruptures, it can trig-
ger a megaquake known as
“the Big One.” The valuable
new imaging of the geology
off the Oregon, Washington
state and British Columbia
coasts comes from a special-
ized research vessel.
The National Science
Foundation seismic survey
ship Marcus Langseth zigged
and zagged for nearly six
weeks over the full length of
the undersea Cascadia Sub-
duction Zone — from the
Oregon-California
border
north to Vancouver Island.
The research expedition
departed from Newport on
June 1 and returned to shore
in Seattle late Sunday.
“It’s going to be a tre-
mendous asset for us to
understand Cascadia,” said
co-chief scientist Brian Bos-
ton, of Columbia University,
moments after stepping off
the ship after 41 days at sea.
Fellow chief scientist
Suzanne Carbotte, a geo-
physicist from Columbia
University, said the primary
goal was to produce a much
sharper picture of the under-
sea fault zone. Many sci-
entists, including her, sus-
pect two colliding plates are
stuck, or “locked” together,
building up tension that will
be released sooner or later in
a catastrophic earthquake.
“For this expedition, we
were using modern tech-
nology that is vastly supe-
rior in terms of what people
can learn over the data that
had been acquired before,”
Carbotte said. “The imaging
that we’re going to get here
is going to be in a diff erent
class than what we have.”
The expedition used
sound to probe miles under
the seafl oor. A set of under-
water compressed air guns
directed booming acoustic
pulses at the seabed.
“It goes to the seafl oor and
Tom Banse/Northwest News Network
The research vessel Marcus Langseth approaches the Port of Seattle on Sunday after a 41-day seismic survey of the Cascadia
Subduction Zone.
then penetrates because it has
a lot of low frequencies in it
and then it refl ects, bounces
off of horizons in the sub-
surface, very similar to a 3D
CAT scan,” Carbotte said.
The refl ected echoes were
picked up by receivers on
land, on the seafl oor and on
a 7.4 mile long cable towed
behind the research vessel.
This kind of noisy under-
water seismic survey work
had the potential to upset
environmentalists.
Ocean
activists worry about distur-
bance to protected marine
mammals off the Pacifi c
coast — chiefl y, whales.
The lead scientists on the
cruise said they deployed
lookouts and an advance
scout ship to make sure no
whales or dolphins were
nearby when they were mak-
ing their underwater racket.
“Anytime that it might
become a problem that we
might hurt or damage a
whale, we immediately shut
down the experiment,” Bos-
ton said. “It was very much
about protecting these spe-
cies out at sea and not trying
to bother them.”
Boston said shutdowns
‘FOR THIS EXPEDITION,
WE WERE USING MODERN
TECHNOLOGY THAT IS VASTLY
SUPERIOR IN TERMS OF WHAT
PEOPLE CAN LEARN OVER THE
DATA THAT HAD BEEN ACQUIRED
BEFORE. THE IMAGING THAT
WE’RE GOING TO GET HERE IS
GOING TO BE IN A DIFFERENT
CLASS THAN WHAT WE HAVE.’
Suzanne Carbotte | a geophysicist from Columbia University
happened infrequently, less
often than he thought they
would, mainly from encoun-
ters with humpback whales.
One of the many research-
ers excited to dig into the
terabytes of data gathered by
this seismic survey is Harold
Tobin, a University of Wash-
ington professor and direc-
tor of the Pacifi c Northwest
Seismic Network. Tobin
came down to the Seattle pier
to greet the returning ship.
He said one thing the much
improved imaging of the
Eastern Oregon donkeys
star in children’s storybook
Cascadia fault zone won’t
explain is when the next Big
One will strike.
“It’s not so much that it
will help us predict the tim-
ing directly,” Tobin said.
“What it is going to do is
create that understanding
of and baseline for what the
fault is actually like and then
how changes in some prop-
erty we can measure — like
the speed of sound waves
through the ground — if that
changes over time, that could
tell us new things about
how the fault is changing its
stress.”
Tobin expects lots of
other insights to emerge. For
example, people could get
a much better idea to what
degree the 700-mile long off -
shore fault is segmented into
shorter chunks with diff erent
properties.
“The reason that’s import-
ant is because that could
make the diff erence between
one magnitude 9 that rips
the whole thing open — or
breaks the whole fault —
or, a series of smaller earth-
quakes, still maybe magni-
tude 8 scale earthquakes, but
that would have very diff er-
ent implications for, let’s say,
tsunami hazard,” Tobin said.
Improved
understand-
ing of the tsunami risk could
also come from 3D imag-
ing of the top layer of ocean
sediment overlying the tec-
tonic plate boundary. The
way the seabed moves or
slips in response to a strong
Cascadia earthquake starting
below it has a lot to do with
how bad a tsunami could be
unleashed.
Tobin said to expect the
fi rst research fi ndings based
on the freshly-gathered data
to come out next year and
continue for years to come.
“We have a lot of mys-
teries still about the Casca-
dia Subduction Zone despite
all those decades of study,”
Tobin said.
The expedition cruise to
fi nd answers started with
what Carbotte called “a lot
of rough spots.” They had
issues with balky instru-
ments, and then fi shing gear
got tangled in the very long
“streamer” listening cable.
After that, heavy seas tore
away the listening cable
entirely. It was quickly
retrieved and the data gather-
ing got back on track.
“I’m very happy to be
back on land,” said Shoushuo
Han, the third co-chief scien-
tist on the expedition. Han
said the team considered the
expedition to be a big suc-
cess because they ended up
acquiring over 90% of their
data objectives.
The National Science
Foundation provided the pri-
mary funding for the research
cruise. The foundation owns
the Marcus Langseth, which
is operated by Columbia
University. Carbotte said the
U.S. Geological Survey was
also heavily involved in this
project.
The last full rip of the
Cascadia Subduction Zone
happened in January 1700.
The exact date and destruc-
tive power were determined
from buried forests along
the Pacifi c Northwest coast
and an “orphan tsunami” that
washed ashore in Japan.
Geologists digging in
coastal marshes and off -
shore canyon bottoms have
also found evidence of ear-
lier great earthquakes and
tsunamis. The radiocarbon
dating of those events makes
it possible to estimate the
recurrence interval of Cas-
cadia megaquakes at roughly
every 250 to 800 years. Since
the last one struck 321 years
ago, that means the populous
Northwest region is within
the window for the next Big
One.
DEL’S O.K. TIRE
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
BOARDMAN — It took
a pandemic to slow Sandra
Payne down enough to fulfi ll
her girlhood dream of writing
a children’s storybook.
“Three Naughty Donkeys”
features a trio of Eastern Ore-
gon donkeys that escape from
their pen and wreak havoc
on their farm. Payne, a Los
Angeles writer, producer and
director, has written children’s
television, including episodes
of “Barney & Friends.” Her
production company, SPwrite
Productions, creates digital
content and commercials.
“During the pandemic, all
the distractions fi nally went
away,” Payne said. “It lit a
fi re under me to get my book
out.”
The tale about three min-
iature donkeys living on her
parents’ Boardman farm had
been simmering in her brain
and was almost fully formed.
Payne’s father, Fred Wal-
ters, served as inspiration for
the character Farmer Freddy.
Without the usual interrup-
tions, she fi nished the book,
researched how to pub-
lish it and found Seattle art-
ist Rachel Yew to provide
illustrations.
The yearning to write a
children’s book kicked in
early when the family lived
in Fairbanks, Alaska, and her
father told fantastical tales to
Sandra and her two siblings.
“Dad’s stories — they
were the Adventures of Gim-
ple Pup,” Payne said. “He
made them up. They were
wild, hilarious adventures
about this pup, and we loved
them. I remember when I
was 9, I got the typewriter out
and started typing up the sto-
ries he was telling us. I said,
that’s what I’m going to do,
I’m going to be a children’s
writer.”
Her fi rst children’s sto-
rybook would have to wait
for years, though. The fam-
A trio of donkeys on her parents’ Boardman farm inspired
Sandra Payne to write a children’s book.
ily moved to the Indonesian
island of Sulawesi, where
Fred, a civil engineer, worked
on a dam that supported the
mining of the second-largest
nickel deposit in the world.
Sandra fi nished eighth grade
there, then spent the next year
at boarding school in the Aus-
trian Alps, where she per-
fected her skiing technique.
Then came a move to Wash-
ington, college, marriage and
graduate school for a master’s
degree in English, where she
took a class on screenwriting.
“Five minutes in, I was,
oh yeah, this is what I’m here
for,” she said. “I loved screen-
writing from the moment I
started.”
Payne and here husband,
Perry, lived in Dallas, where
Perry fl ew airplanes as a U.S.
Air Force pilot and then fl ew
for American Airlines. San-
dra graduated after writing a
screenplay for her thesis and
started looking for a job. In
Dallas, at the time, there were
two shows written for televi-
sion — one was “Barney &
Friends” and the other was
“Walker, Texas Ranger,” she
said.
So, Barney, it was.
Payne did two seasons as a
staff writer for “Barney &
Friends” and wrote the script
for a movie, “Be My Val-
entine, Love Barney.” The
couple moved to Los Ange-
les, where Perry fl ies interna-
tionally from LAX and San-
dra rebooted her career in the
City of Angels. Her résumé
expanded to include various
web series, short fi lms and
commercials.
In 1997, Payne’s parents
moved from Atlanta to Board-
man. Her father worked at the
now-decommissioned Uma-
tilla Chemical Depot to facil-
itate the destruction of chem-
ical weapons, such as nerve
and blister agents stored there
since the 1960s. He special-
ized in cost estimation.
He and and Payne’s mom,
Arlene, settled in on a small
farm, and over time bought
horses and three donkeys,
“Neddy,” “Cocoa” and “Bur-
rito,” to roam the 3-acre pas-
ture. Payne visited every
Fourth of July and fell in love
with the trio of charismatic
donkeys. She decided to put
them into her then yet-to-be-
written children’s book. The
trio of donkeys eventually
became “Cocoa,” “Marsh-
mallow” and “Muggs” in
the book, but the storybook
donkeys had similar physi-
cal characteristics as the orig-
inals. The story is a rambunc-
tious romp accompanied by
Yew’s delightful drawings.
Del Thompson, former owner of
OK Rubber Welders.
Klyde Thompson, current owner
Mike Barnett, manager
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