CORVALLIS, Ore. -- On Wednesday OSU researchers rolled out the school's biggest man made tsunami ever.

The wave easily toppled a six foot concrete wall. Researchers say the wave-maker will allow them to better understand the effects of tsunamis on structures.

They say it's only a matter of time before one strikes Oregon.

“We are looking at a really, really big tsunami that could attack our coast,” said Solomon Yim, Professor of Coastal, Ocean and Structural Engineering at OSU.

Scientists say the tsunami would result from a massive earthquake about 75 miles off the coast. They believe the Cascadia Subduction zone generated a magnitude 9 earthquake here in the Pacific Northwest 300 years ago, and they say stress is building again.

“For structures close to the shore they would be destroyed, the inundation would be about a mile all the way inland,” said Yim.

Researchers hope to engineer buildings that can withstand the power of a tsunami. Such structures would then be used in an evacuation.

“This concept is vertical evacuation which is new here in Oregon and it’s moving people up in building in a flooded zone instead of trying to get everyone out of a flooded zone,” explained Dan Cox, Director of the OSU Wave Research Laboratory.

Researchers say in the event of a tsunami off the Oregon coast, it would hit land within 30 minutes. That’s not enough time to get everyone out, but it is enough time to get people up into tsunami-proof high-rise buildings.

Buildings that OSU hopes its man-made waves will help to build.