It’s the year 2019 in Kenneth Chamberlin’s new fictional book, Megathrust: Surviving is Just the Beginning, and a series of catastrophic earthquakes have hit the West Coast, causing widespread destruction and two 40-foot-high tsunamis to wipe out entire coastal towns.

     In his imaginative narrative, a record 9.3-magnatude quake causes Mt. Garibaldi to erupt, triggering a landslide that buries half of Squamish and completely covers Alice Lake Provincial Part and Brackendale.   The story is based on a scenario he believes to be possible based on his own research, originating from an epicenter in Tofino, the shaking lasts for four continuous minutes, destroying infrastructure and making it impossible to travel around Squamish and most areas on the West Coast, writes Chamberlin.

     The last earthquake in the region of nine or higher on the Richter Scale, was in 1700.  It occurred off the coast of BC and Washington and information about the resulting devastating has been passed down through local First Nations oral history.

      In the last 60 years, writes Chamberlin, there have been a few mild shakers in the Lower Mainland, but with minimal damage and no deaths.  The mega-quake in this book affects thousands of people along the West  Coast of Canada and the United States.

      The next major megathrust earthquake is coming at any time during the next 300 years.  That fact is based on evidence found by seismologists from soil records,” said Chamberlin, who began writing after his retirement from his construction business and serving in the military.  Megathrust is his fourth novel.

      “The location for the volcano and landslide could have been anywhere along the 620-mile long Cascadia Zone, where large mountains exist”, Chamberlin told the Squamish Chief.  “Even though I used this area for the major landslide, triggered by the eruption, keep in mind it is a fiction novel.  I would still live in the area, if it was convenient to my lifestyle.”

      Chamberlin emphasized that a volcano rupture is just one of many possibilities that could play out and is a guess at what could happen in his work of fiction. He said the book is not meant to scare people but to help them prepare for a major earthquake. 

      For the past 319 years, three small plates in Cascadia have been stuck in place.  An earthquake will occur when they slip under the North American plate.

      The novelist has camped out in the Squamish backcountry for the last 20 years and has used his first-hand knowledge of the terrain in his research for the book.

      “All the books I have seen about earthquake events have been of a historic style, with pages of data, facts and figures.  They seem to have been written for the scientific community and do not contain any storyline that the average reader finds enjoyable,” he explained.

      “I believed that I could get the message out to the public more effectively by the way I wrote Megathrust.”

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      Megathrust, Surviving is Just the Beginning is for sale online at Amazon.