Beaux Arts, the little village on the eastern shores of Lake Washington, was the site of a 1.7 magnitude quake this morning, at 8:24 a.m., with a 1.4 quake following exactly an hour later, in the Puget Sound just off Bainbridge Island. (View the details at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network’s recent earthquakes map.)

Both were at a depth of 14 to 15 miles, and would look to be on the Seattle Fault, which some 1,100 year ago delivered a magnitude 7.3 quake whose traces are still visible today.

A 2005 research article on that earthquake, notes our friends at Nisqually Quake, said the event “caused 7 m of vertical uplift on the southern side [of Seattle Fault], sent massive block landslides tumbling into Lake Washington, and created a tsunami in Puget Sound that left sand deposits on Southern Whidbey Island.”

The Suquamish tribe remembers the day very well (again, from the Nisqually Quake):

Long ago, when this land was new, the area we know as Agate Pass was much smaller than today…. There lived in this…body of water a…Giant Serpent. The Double Headed Eagle flew over the pass and the Giant Serpent came up very angry. The two began to fight, and the earth shook and the water boiled…the people began to scream and cry until it was as loud as thunder.

Then, as if the earth was going to be swallowed by the waters, they began to boil and churn. Then, the Double Headed Eagle exploded out of the water and up into the sky with the body of the Giant Serpent in its claws. The Double Headed Eagle flew back into the mountain and behind him was left the wide pass….

The point being, we got off lucky this morning. TGIF.