Who is watching for earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis? Trump is cutting the guardians at the gate

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/climate/volcanoes-earthquakes-tsunamis-federal-cuts-dg?utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit

by cnn

2 comments

  1. Sometime between today and 200 years from now, scientists say “the big one” will hit the United States.

    There is danger lurking on the sea floor [off the Pacific Northwest’s coast](https://www.cnn.com/washington-earthquake-tsunami-violent-earth): After centuries of two tectonic plates pushing up against each other, the Cascadia subduction zone that runs from Northern California all the way up to British Columbia is due to rupture — possibly in our lifetimes.

    “We know that we have the potential for a really massive scale earthquake, the largest we’ve ever seen on the planet,” said Harold Tobin, a professor at the University of Washington and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. “We know that the Pacific Northwest has that possibility.”

    The resulting earthquake could be a devastating magnitude 9.0, and the subsequent tsunami could be 100 feet high, overwhelming coastal cities and towns. Around 13,800 people could die and more than 100,000 others could be injured, the Federal Emergency Management Agency [has estimated](https://mil.wa.gov/asset/62bc6bf87b6dc).

    In short, it could be the worst natural disaster the United States has seen in modern times. [And many scientists say we are less prepared for it than ever before.](https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/climate/volcanoes-earthquakes-tsunamis-federal-cuts-dg?utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit) The league of experts and scientists who have spent decades keeping watch — the guardians at the gate — is being decimated by the Trump administration’s [staffing cuts](https://www.cnn.com/politics/tracking-federal-workforce-firings-dg/index.html).

    It’s not just earthquakes and tsunamis; experts who sound the alarm for volcano eruptions say the cuts will be felt most when there’s a crisis. The scientists who watch the sun for invisible-yet-crippling solar storms are not just losing staff; they face being moved into an entirely different agency.

  2. All the USA needs is pray, science is a radical theory that stands at odds with Christian nationalist.

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