Planning for the megaquake, and after

Two years after Japan was rocked by the same type of monster quake and tsunami that will strike the Pacific Northwest someday, the world’s most seismically fortified nation faces another five to 10 years of rebuilding. Nearly 320,000 people are still in temporary housing. Mountains of debris have yet to be disposed of.

But Japan is recovering much more quickly than Washington and Oregon will if the next Cascadia megaquake strikes anytime soon, says Scott Miles, director of the Resilience Institute at Western Washington University.