Arne Christensen

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.

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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.

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"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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.