All posts by Arne Christensen

Business, Environment, Health, News, Science

Earthquake Prep: Is the Northwest Tech Sector Ready?

Screenshot of recent small quakes--yellow and blue dots--from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network

In the wake of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, I got in touch with Carol Dunn, who works for Bellevue’s Office of Emergency Management, to talk about the job of convincing the community in and around Bellevue to pay attention to the earthquake threat the region faces.

I’ve talked about earthquakes here before, and have a blog about various quakes in the Northwest, but the March 11 disaster brought a new sense of how scary things will get here and on the coast if the Northwest’s subduction zone ruptures in the same way that Japan’s did.

Japan’s disaster has receded from the headlines, and when it comes up it’s mostly in the guise of talk about Fukushima Daiichi, but the example of March 11 still sits as an ominous warning: the question is whether we will heed it. With this in mind, here’s what Carol had to say about the Eastside and why tech companies there need to get ready for temblors.

How do you expect Bellevue and the Eastside to fare in a sizable quake? Will it be helped by its newer buildings built to tougher codes? How will the floating bridges do?

Bellevue and the Eastside have gotten lucky on a number of counts—there is far less ground prone to liquefaction than south King County and Seattle. Most of the building started after the unreinforced masonry period of the 19th century (the type of building found in Pioneer Square and Capitol Hill)—and most high-rises went up after the mid-seventies fashion of building non-ductile concrete structures that don’t handle earthquakes well.

Bellevue does sit right on top of the Seattle Fault Zone, on a section that has broken the surface and thrust itself upward. As such, the area has experienced repeated very intense shaking, much larger than any of the earthquakes we’ve had since the city was founded.  Are Eastside buildings ready for that earthquake? It is worth taking the time to work out how well the buildings you occupy handle quakes: Were they built with earthquakes in mind? We have a number of buildings that are up on posts to provide parking underneath. These types of buildings aren’t allowed in California unless they are specifically braced to handle shaking: That isn’t the case here.

An interesting aspect of the floating bridges is that they are designed to handle a lot more movement than more conventional bridges are—they already get pushed and pulled by our huge windstorms. But we didn’t build them with earthquakes in mind. In fact, there are some aspects of the 520 bridge that really aren’t expected to do well in earthquakes—and I-90 runs right along a Seattle Fault Zone strand. Not every bad thing that can happen will happen in an earthquake, but it is pretty likely that we will be losing the ability to use the bridges.

Where are the weakest soils in and around Bellevue: Which areas are most vulnerable to liquefaction and amplification of seismic waves?

Because of our area’s rich seismic history we have very little bedrock, so our whole area shakes a bit more than other parts of the country.  It’s been described as a bowl of jello before. Lucky for us, during the ice age we had massive glaciers that super-compressed the soil in most places. That’s why gardening can be so fun—you try to dig, and the ground is like concrete. Don’t knock it: That is a saving grace for us regarding earthquakes in many ways. Not all of our ground matches this type of soil though: Areas where water has flowed frequently have built up layers of looser sediment that is waterlogged. These are the areas that are likely to experience liquefaction. During shaking, the looser sediment layers move around independently, so the dirt acts like a liquid not a solid. Heavy objects on ground prone to liquefaction can sink into the ground, sewer pipes and wires can float up. Buildings built on ground prone to liquefaction are likely to experience more intense ground motion.

How does the Eastside’s high-tech economy relate to the earthquake threat? Are the tech companies more attentive about preparedness? Has this changed after the Japan earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis?

In my experience, the larger high tech companies take the earthquake threat very seriously, and have worked quite hard to build resiliency. Not only that, companies like Microsoft reach out to help the community get ready as well. They’ve been working with our local Red Cross to get their staff trained in disaster response, but also to discuss ways that they can support the area after severe storms and earthquakes. I’ve found that successful companies build risk identification and reduction into the way they do business. It makes sense—identify what can go wrong in your life, and take steps to make it not happen. Each thing you keep from going wrong is one less thing that goes wrong—success becomes much easier. That is what personal disaster preparedness is about as well. I do think the situation in Japan has been a wake-up call for most companies. These worst-case scenario earthquakes we try not to think about do happen: It really is important to identify and reduce as many risks as we can while we have the chance.

What kinds of impacts do you think a big local quake or a subduction zone quake would have on this area’s manufacturing and tech industries? It seems that Boeing in particular would be very impaired by damage to its local factories and the loss of transport networks.

If we have a local surface earthquake from the Seattle or Whidbey Island Fault Zones, it isn’t going to be fun, but I suspect recovery will come pretty quickly—we will be having help come from all sides the moment word gets out that there was a major earthquake. When we experience the next subduction zone quake—the type Japan just experienced, and Chile before that, help is going to take a lot longer to reach us. The locations that would normally be rushing to our aid will have also just experienced a massive earthquake. We need to be ready to reach out and help each other. We will be our own rescuers, we will have to be.

Companies do need to have a plan for how to recover if they face large scale disruption—this is true for any company located anywhere. We have our risk of earthquakes, other areas have tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, and human caused problems as well. The more companies can do to increase their ability to function when things are difficult, the better the entire community will fare. Being able to get the population back to work is so important—both psychologically and economically.

And, would King County be looking at similar types of losses of water supply, gas, heat, power, even food, that we’ve seen in Northeast Japan for over two months now?

I read that after the earthquake in Kobe, Japan in 1995, the water pipes were broken every 1,000 feet.  Seattle has a map of all of the water supply problems created by the moderate size quakes that we’ve experienced.  A large quake would definitely cause more leaks.

Because we can predict what can go wrong means that we can build ways to reduce the impact of it going wrong.  We know that we will probably not be able to get water from the pipes—have back up water saved.  If you have a water heater, learn how to turn it off, and know what you need to do to get water from it in an emergency.

This is Part 1 in a three-part series.

Environment, Features, News

On SoDo’s Shifting Sands

Waterfront and tideflats from Beacon Hill, Seattle, ca. 1898; PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights Reserved; Image #1983.10.6049.4 (Photographer: Wilse, Anders Beer, 1865-1949)

Special to The SunBreak by Arne Christensen

I recently looked at Seattle Chronicle, a DVD reprint of local historian Paul Dorpat’s 1992 VHS “2-hour tour through Seatle’s first ninety years, 1851 to 1941,” to quote the front copy.

It’s him narrating a roughly chronological slideshow, for the most part, of pictures of the city as it was a long time ago–some early ’90s video footage of the same neighborhoods contrasted with photographs of them in, say, 1872, to illuminate how much things have changed. Dorpat’s narration is smooth and accomplished: he knows what he’s talking about, and he knows how to talk about it.

The video is, inevitably, a little slow despite the background music: Still, if you’re interested in the way Seattle (especially downtown) used to be, or if your job requires you to know how the city used to be, watching Dorpat’s video is a very good and pretty fast way to get acquainted with old Seattle without looking through old newspapers, city archives, or a stack of books on Seattle history.

Dorpat doesn’t mention earthquakes once, but in several pictures I noticed how watery the SoDo area was well into the 20th century. It’s already been emphasized how much of the waterfront along the Viaduct is fill that used to be tidal flats, and Seattle Chronicle clearly shows that. (Along with watching Dorpat’s video, you can read about the history of SoDo by buying the book on SoDo brought out just last year by Dan Raley, formerly of the Seattle P-I.)

The pictures of SoDo show that the area beneath Beacon Hill also used to be tideflats. It was filled in somewhat by the 1930s, but in that decade the Port of Seattle held it as vacant land, which is why it became the site of Seattle’s Hooverville village of over 500 down-and-outers who built little wood shacks right around where the two stadiums are today.

Now, think to yourself: If this had been firm, stable, readily buildable land, located very close to downtown, why had no one settled on it? Why was it an open space for hundreds of homeless people to live in their makeshift dwellings?

This is something worth noting if you live or work in SoDo: obviously, if your building rests on fill laid down over sand and muck and tidal flows, it’s not going to remain that stable in any kind of substantial earthquake.

Science

The Northwest’s Long Series of Wake-Up Quakes

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Author Arne Christensen standing beside (not underneath) the Viaduct

As the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake came along last year, I realized there wasn’t much being done online to remember the Nisqually earthquake, and I started a blog with the goal of collecting stories from people who went through it.

As the months went by and I looked at books and websites like the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, I was surprised to read about the persistent wave of strong earthquakes that’s been hitting Washington and Oregon, from the infamous 1700 Cascadia subduction zone quake on up to today. So I took a broader approach to my project by assembling stories and pictures about the earthquakes, mostly from Seattle-area newspapers.

Here are some of those stories and pictures, presented chronologically, from 1700 to spring 1996. If the Nisqually quake and the numerous deadly quakes of 2010 haven’t awakened you to the Northwest’s considerable earthquake danger, perhaps this will.

1700: A 2005 article by Ruth S. Ludwin and others called “Serpent Spirit-Power Stories along the Seattle Fault” quoted one account in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of Sunday, March 20, 1904:

When Seattle was first settled by the white people the Indians told of a great earthquake that had occurred some fifty years before. They related that the shocks were so severe that the earth opened up in great cracks and that their little mat and slab huts were shaken to the ground and there were great landslides.

The largest slide near Seattle was immediately south of West Point lighthouse. It is about a mile in extent and can be clearly seen at the present day. The lower bench of Kinnear Park slid at that time from the cliffshore, carrying giant fir trees that still stand on the slide. The Indians said that the mountains “momoked poh” (shot at each other), and roaring of the tidal waves was frightful.

1872: A description by the Weekly Mountaineer of The Dalles, Oregon:

On Saturday evening last, at about half past 9 o’clock, this section of country was visited by a shock of earthquake, which, as far as we are able to learn, did little or no damage. The vibrations lasted probably thirty seconds, and seemed to be from the east to west. The sensation we felt was a very peculiar one and had a tendency in a moment to destroy the illusion and faith we have always had in the stability of the surface of the earth. Animals, especially cows, dogs, and swine, seemed to experience the disturbance, if we judge from the commotion they made at that time.

1873: A letter J.B. Tichenor sent from Port Orford, Oregon, said:

The quiet of our town was somewhat disturbed last evening at 9 o’clock, by a terrible earthquake, the first ever felt in this section. A rotary shock … which lasted fully a minute. No noise accompanied it, not one was hurt, no building thrown down but had we brick structures in our town, not a building would have been standing this morning. I experienced the heavy shake of 1868 in San Francisco, which was nothing to be compared with the one here last evening. Later as people came into town this morning, we hear that it was felt about the same in all quarters within the distance of 10 miles from here.

A loud noise was heard off at sea west of Cape Blanco. It appeared like the rush and upheaving of the waters; in fact the water was seen to rise and fall, boiling and hissing. This took place, or was noticed immediately after the shock, and the people in that vicinity were making preparations for climbing a tree, or getting for higher ground. No tidal wave followed, and nothing unusual noticed on the beach. No signs of higher water. Light house and Tower still standing at this time unable to learn if any damage was done to either.

1909: From the Anacortes American:

J.L. Redenbaugh, manager of the local system of the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Co., has the bravest as well as the prettiest bunch of girls in his office that were ever shaken up by a terrestial wobble. The earthquake struck Anacortes with vague uncertain wiggles at exactly 14 minutes to four o’clock last Monday afternoon, January 11.

Nearly everybody rushed out to see the landscape escape, but the telephone girls stuck to their posts like true heroines and for at least half an hour after the shudder or shrug or whatever it was their dainty fingers fairly twinkled as they made connection on the switchboard for the multitude of subscribers (there are 510 in all now) who simultaneously wanted central and then some. The girls say they were really too busy to take fright and flight, and as they answered more than 1,100 calls within half an hour after the terrestial flutter maybe that explains their heroism, but anyhow they deserve gentle calls from all the subscribers for at least thirty days. . . .

It is said that Guy Baty, who has been hobbling around with a cane for many months, was completely cured by the unprecedented shuffle and left his cane to shift for itself in the deserted rooms of the Anacortes Chess & Checker club, while he and the city health officer engaged in a spirited footrace just of the fun of it.

No damage was done anywhere in this neighborhood, no plastering was knocked down, no chimneys tumbled over and no minds not previously out of plumb were unbalanced. Over in Bellingham plastering was cracked, one sober man was knocked down a flight of stairs and the ice in Lake Padden was cut in four slices like a pumpkin pie.

1939: The Seattle P-I reported:

A couple of gangsters were blazing away at each other in the closing scenes of the feature picture at the Orpheum Theater when the temblor was felt last night. The audience’s first reaction was a mild surprise. Then somebody said in an awed tone: “Let’s get out of here.”

The rush for the doors began, wildly at first and then with mild order as more sensible theater goers, some of whom admitted afterwards they had experienced the same sensations often in California, advised the patrons to “take it easy.” . . . Don Geddes, theater manager, said there were no accidents. No damage had been done. “Too bad they missed the picture’s finish. The riot squad and the fire department arrive in the next scene and there’s really a panic.”

At the Egyptian Theater in the University District a news reel was showing heavy German artillery in action and for a few seconds many in the audience felt that an unusually realistic rumbling effect was being added for their entertainment. There was an exodus for the exits when it became apparent they were experiencing an earthquake.

1945: J.F. Little was out fishing on Little Rattlesnake Lake with a friend when this quake happened. Little: “There was a terrific rumble like a thunderbolt or a big explosion. We were in a boat. I was standing up, and it almost shot out from under me. Then a giant whirlpool appeared in the lake, spewing fish to the surface on all sides of us. We were about convinced there were no fish in the lake, but that earthquake taught us different. We were some time figuring out what had happened. At first, we thought maybe some flyer had dropped a bomb on Mount Si for practice.”

Carl Edgerly, a druggist in North Bend, said: “I was out on the golf course when I felt it. I looked up at Mount Si just in time to see a huge shelf crack off and go plunging down the side of the mountain with a roar.”

1946: The P-I interviewed a variety of people with quake stories. Mike Lynch, a downtown bail bondsman, said of the Smith Tower: “I think it swayed for about half a minute. I was afraid it might fall over.”

Walter Callahan, the King County jailer, said, “There was no panic, but a lot of excitement. When I got to the women’s wards the girls were gathered at the door, repeating the Lord’s prayer.”

Mrs. Jewell Mitchell, who was visiting her son, a convicted murder, in the county jail office, added: “I’ve been used to California where we expect earthquakes. But this came so suddenly. . . I didn’t think you had them in Washington.”

1946, quake #2: In the Seattle Times, W.J. McMahan of the Milwaukee Railroad said this about watching the Sears building (which is now the Starbucks headquarters building) during the quake: “The movement of the building was not very noticeable because everything else, including the ground and myself, was rocking with it. But the quake whipped the flagpole on the top of the building like a cracking whip. I thought sure it was going to snap off.”

The Times quoted local weather forecaster Harry Torbitt saying: “Earthquakes have nothing to do with future weather conditions, but some persons even try to blame these shocks on us. People need not worry; the quake isn’t going to cause unusual weather like a midsummer snowstorm. People kept us busy throughout the day, calling to ask about the quake, but that isn’t our business.”

1949: Phil Orlando, a steelworker who was standing on one of the 500-foot towers of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (that is, the replacement for the Narrows Bridge that snapped in high winds in November 1940), told the Times:

I had just sent in the last signal, and told the men it was pretty close to lunch time so we’d knock off for a safety meeting. The tower began swaying, and then the casting began snapping off the 1-inch bolts it was fastened with.

I jumped off the casting. It began to slide toward me, so I jumped back on. Then I jumped off again and finally caught a safety line and hung on for all I was worth. Just as I caught the line the tower whipped again and the casting I had been standing on disappeared. The tower kept shaking and I hung on, worrying about how my brother was making out underneath. I think the tower swayed six feet east and west and two feet north and south, but it seemed it was swinging a mile.

1949: Part of a story Jim Flynn sent to me early this year:

My mother and her “Den 9″ Cub Scouts were in the cupola of the State’s Capitol building in Olympia when the 1949 earthquake struck. Keystones were falling all around them; my mom hung on to the brass doorknob and told the kids to hang on to her. If the quake had lasted a few seconds longer (she was told later), the entire top of the Capitol would have collapsed, with the Cubs going along for the ride. I had been up on an earlier tour, and I had to convince a State Patrolman that there were people up there, on top of the building. Another group of Cubs was stuck in the elevator and had to be let down with the power off.

After the quake, my mother led the Cubs down a darkened, circular iron stairway inside the Capitol dome with cracked plaster falling around them. They arrived at a landing where they could see people far below. The huge chandelier (designed by Tiffany) was also swinging slowly below them. It swung back and forth, slowly, for many days afterwards.

1962: The Oregonian said of this quake that came just before the November elections: “Monday night’s violent, though brief tremor was one of a series [of earthquakes], each recalling to mind the fact that the ‘young’ mountains of the Pacific slope . . . are on the move. Monday night’s quake found us already conditioned to the sound of falling chimneys and to the light of candles. For it came less than a month after we were brushed by Typhoon Frieda’s swirling skirt. . . . We must agree that the loss of life has been providentially low. The daily routine has scarcely missed a beat. But we don’t have to like it. The wonder is that some people still complain about the soft Oregon rain.”

1965: From Knute Berger: “I was at before-school orchestra practice at John Muir elementary. Our teacher, Mr. Bloom (who looked just like Richard Nixon) continued to tune a violin throughout the quake telling us all to be calm. I put my French horn over my head for protection as cracks appeared in the ceiling of the school lunchroom overhead.”

1965: The Times quoted Space Needle Restaurant manager Basil Miaullis saying:

First we felt a bounce and than an oscillation–a whipping around. Everybody stayed put. There was no panic. No one ran for the elevators. And when it was all over, everybody finished breakfast just about as if it never had happened.

John Graham, the architect whose firm designed the Space Needle, was here. He wanted to know how much the Needle swayed. It swayed a little more than it did during the big Columbus Day windstorm in October, 1962, during the World’s Fair. It was just like riding the top of a flagpole.

The Space Needle has such a low center of gravity that it did not affect us as much as people might think. All we lost was a couple of bottles of booze. This place is built to take it.

A post-quake ad from “Olympia’s Chrysler-Plymouth Dealer” said: Earthquake Topples Prices At State Motors:

1980: The Mt. St. Helens eruption was triggered by an earthquake, as Jim Zollweg of the U.S. Geological Survey explained to the P-I: “Right at the surface is where the volcano erupts, so scientists at the time were paying a lot of attention to that. That’s where the mountain was actually bulging, and that’s where the mountain failed. A magnitude 5.1 earthquake triggered the landslide that essentially opened up the crater and released the magma and gases.”

1995: In the Times, Nancy Mendoza, spokeswoman for the Tacoma-Pierce County chapter of the American Red Cross, said: “I was in the kitchen talking on the telephone. The whole house started moving. Neighbors came running down banging on my door. People were right up on their porches almost instantly.”

And, in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake, she warned: “Boy, if we’re going to get more of these, people should get themselves prepared. This is sure a wake-up call for people. We ought to seriously think about getting ready for an earthquake instead of worrying about it.”

1996: Seattle Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus said this about exiting the broadcast booth right after the 5.3 Duvall earthquake of May 2, 1996, during a game at the Kingdome vs. the Cleveland Indians:

Three years ago I was in Los Angeles during an earthquake, I know what they can do. I turned around (and) my producer was as white as a sheet, things were rolling back and forth in the booth and I said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re having an earthquake” – and I’m out of here.

We ran down the ramps and once I was outside I went into the TV truck and got on the telephone to the station. Was there dead air? You’d have to ask KIRO, I wasn’t around. I didn’t want to go down with the ship.

Features

Remembering the Kingdome on Its 10-Year Implosion Anniversary

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The Kingdome looms over the guided missile cruiser USS LEAHY (CG-16), arriving in port during the Seattle Sea Fair 1982. (Photo by PH1 HAROLD J. GERWIEN)

I wrote the following article on the Kingdome’s death just under 10 years ago. Since this is the anniversary of the building’s implosion, I thought this was a good time to re-present it and remember the Dome in the days after its extinction but before it became a very dim memory:

I didn’t see the Kingdome’s end. I didn’t see the Kingdome’s beginning. I did, though, grow more and more familiar with it throughout the ’90s, first as an occasional visitor, then as a Seattle resident.

It always seemed out of place in Seattle’s skyline: the lean skyscrapers glistening off the water and dockside piers and shipping facilities giving way to a plump, squat mushroom bulging above rows of SoDo warehouses. What was that concrete behemoth doing adjacent to the brick and stone of Pioneer Square?

But watching Mariner games (I never saw anything else in the Dome, save one high school basketball title game) was pretty enjoyable. The controlled climate assured you that the weather wouldn’t intrude on the game, while the dome and carpeted field gave the event a sort of domestic, suburban feeling—like nothing too dramatic or traumatizing would happen.

Usually that was the case: There’s only one game I remember at all vividly. (I missed the big comeback run in 1995, only to later start up a website chronicling those games.) The last time I was in the Kingdome, in the summer of 1998, the Mariners played a 15 or 16-inning game, filled with extra-inning near-defeats for both sides, until the Mariners lost it.

 

“Kingdome? Where?” courtesy of SunBreak Flickr pool member slightlynorth.

All throughout early 2000, as the paneling came off and the cement ribbing of the structure came to light, the Kingdome seemed to completely change. As the seal of the Dome was removed, you could glimpse inside and get some sense of what it really was. It seemed to expand in its openness, growing lighter and more flexible.

 

The mausoleum had turned into an exoskeletal shell which, like the carapace of a dead beetle, has an essential sparseness and structural clarity as it turns from a living shield into a dead container.

I remember one photo in the Seattle Times, which must have come from early March, showing a purplish dawn that flooded the Kingdome with its pale, diffused light. Shafts of light flashed through the open air between the concrete ribs and disappeared somewhere inside the stadium. That was the only time I ever thought of the Dome as something beautiful.

In its dying weeks, the city’s monolith was becoming something different from the building I had known. With the now complete Safeco Field standing as a symbol of a more stylish downtown, with its exposed-steel design and upscale atmosphere, the Kingdome had itself come to look more and more like Safeco.

I found myself wondering why the Dome hadn’t looked like this before, why the internal shape of it had been so grossly obscured by various superfluous and ugly coverings.

As it was undergoing final preparations for dissolution, I was out of the country. I was on the return flight, I suppose somewhere in southern Quebec, as the Kingdome was destroyed. Coming back from the airport, I saw the pile of dust, girders and structural remains left over, and was struck by its brevity: The Kingdome had lived for not even a full generation.

I find myself generally fascinated by the question of what happens to things after they’re officially dead, whether it’s a satellite, a car, a television, or a person, and the Kingdome was not an exception.

Although nothing spectacular happened to the rubble of the Dome, I returned to the site several times to look at the piles of undifferentiated rubble and support columns writhing in the dust, and, of course, the beginnings of the new football stadium replacing the Kingdome.

The explosion had drawn huge crowds, both in Seattle and around the world, but then, as the actual material of the Kingdome was being removed, no one was watching.

I guess that rubble was later used to construct highways or office complexes, but meanwhile, the memories created by and within the Dome remain, and that’s what’s fascinating: how our memories retain and elaborate upon people, events, and experiences that are long since dead.

Environment, News, Science

Puget Sound’s Risk for a Haiti-Like Earthquake

You’ve probably spent a lot of time the past week watching video and photos, reading news articles and tweets about the Haiti earthquake. You’ve felt sorry for the Haitians, aghast at the scenes of death and ruin, and agonized over the condition of the survivors. But you probably haven’t imagined anything remotely similar happening in the Seattle area.

Back in June 2005, a half year after the earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asia, and over four years after the Nisqually earthquake, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Washington Military Department brought out a “Scenario for a Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake on the Seattle Fault.”

That is, an earthquake slightly lighter than what struck Haiti last week, and one that would come on the Seattle Fault, which runs through south Seattle, Mercer Island, Bellevue, and the Issaquah area. It wasn’t pretty: the vision of the aftermath of a 14-mile surface rupture running roughly parallel to I-90 involved over 1,600 dead, another 24,000 wounded, $33 billion of damage, and months of transportation problems for Puget Sound.

The scenario said a 6.7 Seattle Fault quake will cause damage “far worse and more extensive than seen in any earthquake in the state’s history.”

“The viaduct will be heavily damaged or collapse,” in a way very similar to how Oakland’s Cypress Viaduct pancaked in the Loma Prieta quake, Boeing Field “will experience significant liquefaction” on its runways and close for several days, the Seattle ferry terminals “will shut down for at least a week due to damage from ground failures and failure of the seawall,” and we’ll see a lot of the brick buildings in Pioneer Square tumble, along with a lot of the concrete warehouses south of downtown.

The field hospitals being set up in Haiti will appear here, as various hospital buildings shut down from quake damage. We’ll have similar trouble getting water, gas, sewage, and other utilities to start working again, because the quake will crack pipes, splinter power lines, and shut down cell phone service. Those sturdy old brick schools in Seattle and elsewhere? Some, at least, will crumble.

I could go on for some time detailing the wheres and whats of how the 1,600 will die in the envisioned 6.7 quake, as well as the many problems faced by its survivors. But if you’re not an emergency planner or a seismologist, what it all comes to is: Don’t just feel sorry for the Haitians. We could be the next object of pity, so we’d better get ready. Learn from the disaster in Haiti, don’t just look at it.

You can learn about Puget Sound earthquake hazards-the Seattle Fault Scenario’s just one of three basic quake types threatening the region-by visiting the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and by reading through the “Scenario for a Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake on the Seattle Fault.” And if you want some context for the region’s earthquake hazards, take a look at my project chronicling the many sizable historic Northwest quakes from the massive Cascadia Subduction Zone quake of 1700 to the Nisqually quake in 2001.

Sports

Looking Back at Randy Johnson’s Farewell Start at Safeco

The following article was written last May, in response to Randy Johnson coming to Seattle one last time on the 22nd of that month, and posted to my site about the 1995 Mariners. Since we’ve just heard about his retirement, I thought I should reprint it here as an acknowledgment of his central position in Mariners’ history.

Randy Johnson’s start at Safeco Field last Friday night for San Francisco was probably his last in Seattle.  I got to the game early, hoping for a Felix Hernandez bobblehead (which didn’t happen), but also to see Johnson warm up before the game. I figured it was the last chance I’d have, and a lot of others figured the same way: the crowd was five or six deep all along the Giants’ bullpen. 

We didn’t get to see the bid for 300 wins that was supposed to make Friday’s game uniquely compelling, but standing in the crowd pressed up against the pen, waiting for the Big Unit to make his appearance, that didn’t really seem to matter. Most everybody was there because of what Johnson had done in Seattle, not because the cumulative digits with Houston, Arizona, etc., had turned over enough times to put him within grasp of the 300-victory club.

This wasn’t the playoffs or a crucial late-season game, but the excitement around the bullpen was at that sort of level as Johnson first tossed the ball in the outfield, then slid open the gate and made his way into the pen. Really meaningful Mariner games have been scarce ever since 2001, but Randy was going to give us one even if he got ejected in the first inning. 

No matter what happened in the game, this would be our last chance to see him up close, so it’s no wonder the stairs leading down to the bullpen were jammed, you saw cameras everywhere, and we craned our necks through the crowd to get a better glimpse. Not even the dour and usually efficient Safeco ushers were able to really manage this crowd.

As Randy threw, one guy who looked a bit like Jay Buhner kept yelling “Randeeee!,” hoping for a wave or glance from Johnson; he didn’t give it. We’ve all heard about the Big Unit’s game face, but I’d never seen it up close.  Separated by a few rows of people, what comes across most clearly is what he doesn’t do: look over at us or the field, or up at the sky, or into the stands, or say anything, sniff the air, take care of an itch, motion at anything other than the catcher. 

It’s just him, the ball, the pitching motion, and a catcher’s glove. The “Randeeee!” guy said as much to me when I admitted that yes, I wanted the Unit to win and leave Seattle with a bang. I think we were all hoping for at least a 10-strikeout game, and with luck, a no-hitter.  The Mariners could make up the loss sometime later: getting a game closer to .500 in late May just wasn’t as important as Randy Johnson coming back and delivering something memorable for his audience.

Johnson stopped throwing, faced the bullpen wall, took his cap off. It took a second for me to realize it was time for the national anthem. I felt sheepish for paying really too much attention to just some warm-up throws, put away the camera, tried to regain some perspective. A few people around the bullpen kept taking shots of Johnson as the anthem played.

Up in the left field stands, there was an old lady with ’95 on the back of her blue Mariners cap in the row beneath me, some quiet Giants fans on both sides, some rowdier Mariners and Giants fans farther off to the side. When Aaron Rowand hit his leadoff homer our way, I noticed the vendors with their orange shirts were practically silent Giants supporters, adding to the already sizable mix of Giants’ colors at the ballpark.

Randy came in with a 94-mph fastball in the first inning, then he walked Adrian Beltre after getting an 0-2 count and closed the first with a swinging strikeout of Wladimir Balentien. It felt a little like old times: the dangerously fast and erratic Big Unit of the early ’90s was trying to re-emerge. Through five innings, Randy was still a little erratic, striking out six, but sometimes missing with his slider way outside and low to lefties, and taking a while to get hitters out. He’d thrown about 90 pitches. The Mariners were just getting singles, including one silly bloop over Johnson’s head by Kenji Johjima that might have gone 80 feet, but no one could catch.

In the bottom of the sixth, it became obvious this wasn’t the 30-year-old Unit, or even the 40-year-old Unit: he went to 3-2 counts on Russell Branyan and Jose Lopez, took 10 pitches to strike out Branyan after getting a 1-2 count, and had Lopez eke a single through the infield on his eighth pitch after getting an 0-2 count. These were guys he would have struck out quickly a few years ago. He’d thrown about 115 pitches, and just wasn’t getting the ball by hitters. Randy still has some speed, he’s still effective, he’s still pretty durable: but he’s not Cy Young material anymore.

He left the game to unanimous cheers, lifted his left arm to acknowledge them as he crossed into foul territory, and settled into the dugout. We might have brought him back out with renewed applause, but an NBA highlight flashed on the screen, and the moment was over.

For whatever reason, the Mariners didn’t do anything to acknowledge Johnson’s career with the team, unless that came before I got to Safeco: no highlights on the video screen, no call for applause from the fans, no first pitch thrown out by Dan Wilson or another player from the ’90s Mariner teams. That didn’t seem right, but maybe the ownership still resents him leaving town, and anyway he’s been gone long enough that they figured it wasn’t necessary. Still, when I looked from the left field stands toward the street, there was a banner attached to a lamppost with Wilson leaping into Johnson’s arms after defeating the Angels in the ’95 division playoff.

So exactly what does all this have to do with 1995? Well, I didn’t go to any of Randy Johnson’s three earlier returns to Seattle, with the Diamondbacks in 1999 and then twice with the Yankees, in 2005 and 2006, so I don’t know how those ones compare. But it’s obvious the Big Unit’s fans are still legion in Puget Sound, more than a decade after he left town.

This time was different, I think, simply because of the distance time provides. Randy’s practically at the end of his career, with quite a few more wins after leaving Seattle than he had with the Mariners; kids born in 1995 will be going to high school in the fall; the Kingdome’s a fading memory.

There must be a few people still accusing Johnson of malingering in 1998 or just upset that he didn’t stay on with Seattle. But the people who were at Safeco on Friday to see Johnson pitch were paying tribute to what he’d done for their lives as baseball fans by carrying the Mariners in ’95 and pitching a lot of memorable games for the team in his 10 years at the Kingdome. He gave us those memories, and now was coming back one last time to revitalize them by simply showing up on the mound: that’s all he had to do.