The Kamchatka Peninsula earthquake may not have brought the same devastation as previous shocks, but a far more deadly seismic event is looming for the US West Coast.

A major 600-mile-long fault line known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone runs from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to Cape Mendocino in northern California.

Scientists have predicted there is a 15 per cent chance of a major earthquake there in the next 50 years, which could bring a mega-tsunami hundreds of feet high to US coastlines.

A study from Virginia Tech in April showed an earthquake of force eight or above could cause coastal land to sink 6.5 feet within minutes, devastating cities such as Seattle and Portland and flooding hundreds of miles of roadway, airports, schools, hospitals and power plants.

Researchers determined that the most severe effects would hit densely populated areas in northern California, southern Washington and northern Oregon.

Like the Kamchatka quake, the Cascadia fault line lies in the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ - a 25,000-mile horseshoe of 452 volcanoes which stretches from the southern tip of South America, along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, Japan and New Zealand.

The ring produces around 90 per cent of the world’s earthquakes.