You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here and Hannah Chin with this month's installment of NatureQuest.

And Emily, full disclosure, I'm doing something a little bit selfish today.

Instead of answering a real listener question, I'm using my producer privilege

TM to investigate a question that I've had for a while about earthquakes. Okay, tell me more.

So I'm from Portland, Oregon, and Portland is not a hot spot for earthquakes. We just don't

experience them multiple times a year, you know, the way Californians do.

But Portland is right next to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is this underwater fault

line in the Pacific Ocean that stretches from Canada all the way down to northern California.

And as long as I can remember, Portlanders have known that an earthquake is coming.

When we talk about it, we call it the big one.

A big one.

This sounds kind of scary, because I always picture, you know, Pacific Northwest is very, like, chill.

This is the opposite of chill.

It is the opposite of chill.

So I called up a seismologist.

His name's Diego Melgar, and he's the director of Crescent, the Cascadia region Earthquake Science Center.

And I asked him, like, what would an earthquake this big feel like?

You would feel shaking where it's difficult, maybe even impossible for you to stay standing,

for anywhere between one or three minutes. Start counting

right now and realize how long that is. Scientists say this earthquake, it'll demolish buildings,

rupture utility lines, liquefy soil. We might get significant collapses of bridges and any old

...