SEATTLE - Since Sept. 21, there have been a dozen strong quakes in the Southwestern Pacific. The worst, a magnitude 8, hit the Samoan Island region, including American Samoa.
Today at Tacoma's Hilltop Christian Center, they're gathering supplies to aid Samoan families devastated by the quake and the accompanying tsunami.
But while this part of the world is across the international dateline and is thousands of miles away, it shares a similar geology with Washington and the Pacific Northwest. Both the west coast of the U.S. and places like American Samoa are on the so called "Ring of Fire."
It's because of this that scientists may learn something from the swarm of big quakes in the Southwestern Pacific that could bring lessons learned for the Pacific Northwest, where a long subduction zone fault runs from Cape Mendicino in Northern California to north of Vancouver Island, B.C.
The subduction zone is where the expanding ocean floor tectonic plates are forced underneath the continent. Geologists find that evidence of the last giant quake along this fault happened in the year 1700, and expect we will see a similar quake, of perhaps a magnitude 9, sometime in the next 200 years.
