This photo from the Seattle Times, shows damage from the Feb 2001 quake in South Seattle...
The Nisqually Earthquake hit the Seattle area on February 28, 2001, at 10:54 AM. My son was 17 years old, and I had just left him at home and gone to work at the University of Washington Hospital. I was sitting at my desk on something like the 3rd floor of the hospital. When the building began shaking, people stopped what they were doing, and looked around. As the shaking continued, people assumed it was an earthquake. There were sirens that went off on the floor, as the labs and hospital were full of oxygen and all kinds of explosive things. The electricity went out and people began to move in the dark towards the stairwells to exit the building. Several hundred people were going down the stairs and when we finally got to the ground floor, we saw people who were in the middle of dental surgery being walked out with technicians holding all kinds of things hanging out of their mouths!
At the ground level, people were gathered around the hospital doors wondering what to do next. I left and walked home to my son, worrying about aftershocks. When I got home, my son had the transistor radio on, listening to news reports about the quake. Our home was a wood house and was fine, but my son and I were shaken up as we have survived both the Northridge and Loma Prieta quakes at ground zero. In the California quakes we have survived, there were strong aftershock series'. There were no aftershocks of note after the Nisqually quake and the Nisqually quake, itself, was not really that strong. It was one of the stronger quakes I have felt in the Pacific NW, but it was *nothing* compared to what we experienced in Santa Cruz in 1989 and Northridge in 1994.
Photos from The Olympian, show damages in Olympia, WA from the Nisqually quake
In downtown Seattle, many bricks fell off of older buildings into streets and some of the older buildings, such as the court house, showed significant damage. The Alaskan Way Viaduct sustained some damages from this quake and engineers have stressed the need for the viaduct to be replaced asap for years now. I worry that Seattle got a false sense of security from the Nisqually quake, as many now feel that since they got through that one so well, they have nothing to worry about. But as I said, the quaking I experienced in the Northridge 1994 quake felt about 4 times as strong as this Seattle quake. The violence we felt in the jerking motions in the Northridge quake, and the aftershock series that followed, were so much stronger than this Nisqually quake. The same with the Santa Cruz quake in 1989. That was a really upsetting quake, and it again, felt so much stronger than this one in Seattle in 2001. I worry that if we got shaking equivalent to what we experienced in Northridge or Santa Cruz, all of downtown Seattle would be a pile of glass and rubble, and the Alaskan Way Viaduct will fall over just like the freeway of the same design did in the Kobe quake, or collapse like the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland in 1989.
I wish Seattle and the surrounding areas would take earthquake preparedness more seriously as I feel that most people in the NW do not understand the gravity of the threat that looms in that region. And I think they do not realize how strong quakes can actually be on the rim of fire. As the saying goes, "the next quake comes when the last one is forgotten."
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.