I was thinking of the Renton plant, as I have driven past that one many times. I wasn’t aware that there was another plant in Everett. Thanks for the catch Caircair.
I’ll never forget that one.
It was just an exhilarating quiver here on the Oregon coast.
Good luck to all Seattle dopers.
From a Seattle friend’s e-mail:
I did have to point out (Job’s comforter that I am) that when you’re on the 39th floor (as he is), if the building collapses it probably doesn’t mean much that you were under your desk: “Yes, he fell 39 stories and he’d undoubtedly be dead but he had the presence of mind to crawl under his desk!”
Actually, I shouldn’t tease at all; I understand they’re all pretty shook up out there (no pun intended). Hope all our Seattle Dopers are safe and sound.
I grow up in the Midwest being terrified of tornadoes, I move out here to Seattle thinking that now I am safe from major natural disasters, and now this.
It will be fine with me if I never experience another earthquake in my life. Good God. The ground is supposed to be solid, not bouncing around like a playground teeter-totter.
That having been said, I am extremely thankful to the powers that be that I and all my loved ones, and apparently everyone else out there managed to make it through alive, and for the most part uninjured.
Major stuff:
There’s a crack in the capitol dome at Olympia. Some of the bridges in the city are closed while they check for structural damage. There are cracks in the runways at Sea-Tac airport, which has been closed for the next 24 hours, last I heard. The Starbucks building either partially or completely collapsed. There were some fires in the industrial district. Some cars were crushed by falling debris.
On the news they are saying, “This is not the big one.” Great. They are also saying that because the epicenter was so deep – 30 miles down – we should not experience any aftershocks, which is fine by me.
Thanks for letting us know, Euty. I’ve been worried about Scotti since I heard.
Now I’m just waiting to hear that my cousin and relatives in Seatle are alrigth too…
Anybody know how Ft. Lewis fared? I was stationed there while in the Army. I thought that if I ever moved from my home in Kansas that the Sea-Tac area would be nice. It seemed at the time to be more liveable than any of the other places I was stationed in the US.
Thank you for creating a segue that I can use to expound on something that angers me greatly. They’re saying that fifty thousand people were killed in India recently. Fifty thousand. That’s about the same as the population of my town. I am not an engineer, but if only there were decent construction codes that were followed, that death toll would be significantly smaller. Those were lives that didn’t need to be lost. There are ways to build structures so that they don’t fall down in earthquakes. The Bhuj earthquake was huge, significantly larger than this Seattle quake, or any quake I have experienced, but fifty thousand? And twelve hundred in El Salvador. And how many thousands were killed in Turkey in 1999? I’m thrilled that no one has (so far) died as a result of this quake, but it once again reminds me of the staggering differences in quake preparedness between industrialized and third-world nations. The preventable loss of life is heartbreaking.
Sorry for the hijack. Again, my thoughts and best wishes are with the people of the PNW.
Well said, Kyla. We’re lucky in so many ways.
I’m still shaking, watching the pictures on MSNBC, and I wasn’t even there. Mom, three sons, brother – all fine.
And the Alaskan Way viaduct came through okay!! I always hated driving south on that thing.
Mom called me at work right after it happened – she was okay, but she said she wanted to cry. Natural reaction.
Thanks also, Euty. Scotti, dear, glad to hear you’re all right. That’s some scary stuff to go through.
Hope you other Seattle folks are okay.
Gosh, I’ve got relatives in Olympia…
Nobody died. There are ~28 people treated at Harborview, ~4 serious injuries. A few buildings were damage, but almost everything is fine.
It was actually kind of fun. I was on the 13th floor at my desk…the building kinda shook, but I didn’t think much of it. Then it REALLY started shaking. And waving. And bending to and fro. I got under my desk, the main thing to do is prevent broken glass and light fixtures from dropping on your head. So people panicked and bolted for the stairs. Not the best idea when it will take you 2-3 minutes to get outside.
Anyway, they let everyone back into my building to get their stuff then sent us home. Of course, it took hours to get back home because the ferries, busses, cars and such were totally off schedule and I live on Vashon Island. Well, that’s about it.
Oh, the quake was pinpointed to the Juan de Fuca plate, 30 miles deep and about 11 miles northeast of Olympia, and now they have a consensus that it measured 6.8. They also said that since the quake was from the Juan de Fuca plate it didn’t release any stress from the Seattle fault…so we’re just as likely to get the BIG ONE as we were yesterday.
This was the biggest earthquake I’ve ever been in. I’ve been in a few liiiiitle tremblors before…but nothing over 5.0 or so.
So there was some good news!!
My house shook so much I’ve had to change my screen name.
Henceforth, I shall be known as Girl Two Doors Down.
Starbuck’s spokeswoman said the damage was cosmetic. I noticed a beer warehouse was heavily damaged, now THAT is a tragedy.
I heard from my sister, she works at an art supply store and she said the shelved goods were all knocked off, spraying oil paints everywhere and making a dangerous and inflammable mess. The windows were all smashed, everything was on the floor, but people were still trying to get her to ring up their purchases. She said she had to lock the doors, and people were STILL trying to get in, even though they had no power and no way to ring up sales.
This is even worse behavior than I expected, back when I lived in LA I used to say that when the Big One came, people would dust off a chair in the rubble of favorite restaurant and complain when they weren’t being served. But I was JOKING. Sheesh. At least LA people are a little bit more sober about quakes now after Northridge and Whittier. I was sitting right on top of the epicenter of the 6.1 Whittier quake, for the next week I felt like I was levitating 3 inches off the ground.
As of about 1700 PST, cable news channels are reporting one fatality. I haven’t heard any more details yet.
Despite the stricter earthquake codes alone the west coast, I was surprised–shocked, even–when I moved from northern California to Seattle back in the Eighties. What stunned me was the abundance of brick construction in Seattle… and not just homes. Warehouses, churches, schools. Old and big brick buildings are, in my experience, a rarity in CA. They were a real source of danger today. In the Big One, IMO, they’ll be serious deathtraps.
[sup]EMPHASIS MINE[/SUp]
Thank you Kyla, for succinctly expressing what I found so outrageous about the loss of life in the Bhuj Disaster. I make no pretenses about the third world enforcing our building codes, yet I could not help but be outraged at the phenomenal and unnecessary loss of life in that particular catastrophe.
I do not mean to hijack this thread so much as praise the quality of life that many of us enjoy. However fallible our leaders may be, at least the baseline of our law averts intentional compounding of such a disaster. As Jim Morrison said:
“The West is the best.”
The one death attributed to the earthquake was apparently a heartattack.
They have now accounted for all the employees in the Starbucks building and have determined to a degree of certainty that no one is trapped in the building.
Boy we got outta this one realtively unscathed. Thank you to all those who offered their concern to those of us in this area.
Woah. That thing was incredible. I was in the school library at the time, with thankfully lots if big tables to get under.
Unfortunately though, the school busses had to wait to get the OK from the school district. I was sitting in my bus for about an hour.
It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed how bad the quake was. Just about everyone’s chimney was damaged in one way or another, and in fact, one chimney even toppled onto a neighbor’s house and broke part of the gutter off, and a bit of the edge of the roof.
Inside my house was a total mess. It was hard to get around. There was lots of broken glass in the kitchen, and two larbe shelves in the basement toppeled over.
Awesome, simply awesome. I’ve never experienced anything like that. I mean, we’ve had little quakes in the past, but nothing like this. I remember when I was in elementary school, the teachers were always saying how the big one is going to come any time now. Well, it did come, but a few years late.
Blizzard. Riot. Earthquake. Surely there’s got to be a simpler way to kill Bill Gates.
Juan de Fuca. It’s fun to say! Juan de Fuca. Juan de Fuca. Juan de Fuca.
Just in case anybody is still interested in this, I just remembered the name of a Seattle news organization and found this link:
http://www.king5.com/detailtopstory.html?StoryID=14807
I apologize. I should have thought of this sooner, but I live in the Portland, OR area, ~120 mi. south.