Earthquake reminded us why we prepare

JOHN DODGE, THE OLYMPIAN

"I do have some concern that people will gain a false sense of confidence that they made it through the big one." -- Bill Steele, University of Washington seismologist

OLYMPIA -- We live in earthquake country.

Every year, more than 1,000 earthquakes happen in this state. Even the damaging ones aren't that rare -- 21 in the past 125 years.

But before Ash Wednesday, 36 years had passed since a jolt big enough to injure people and damage roads, bridges and buildings had occurred here.

A lot of complacency can build up over half a lifetime, despite the best intentions of people like Barbara Thurman, who coordinates family protection programs for the state emergency management division of the Washington Military Department.

Amid the property loss, grief and fear that descended on South Sound at 10:54 a.m. Wednesday, Thurman expects something good to surface.

"It should lead to increased earthquake preparedness," Thurman said. "The earthquake opens the window -- it shows people that a damaging earthquake is not a matter of if, just a matter of when."

Thurman said the earthquake was a reminder of how important it is for a family to have an out-of-state contact where family members can call and leave messages for each other. It's hard for anyone to focus on their jobs and duties in a disaster if they don't know their loved ones are safe.

The earthquake served as a reminder that there's a reason we all practice "drop, duck and cover" drills in school. That's the right thing to do, not just for school children, but everyone.

Thurman said the earthquake should spur people on to make their homes and businesses more earthquake-proof, doing everything from bolting the house to the foundation to having a family disaster kit on hand.

Not nasty enough?

Bill Steele, a University of Washington seismologist, has spent a lot years warning anyone who will listen that the region is overdue for a damaging earthquake.

He fears the Feb. 28 magnitude 6.8 quake may not have been nasty enough to galvanize folks into better disaster planning.

"I do have some concern that people will gain a false sense of confidence that they made it through the big one," he said.

That would be a mistake, he said.

The Ash Wednesday quake was deep in the earth, situated along a stress point in the Juan de Fuca plate, which dips beneath the North American continental plate. The depth helped cushion the blow.

Deep earthquakes are the most common in the Pacific Northwest. And for some yet-to-be-explained reason, this one lacked the degree of ground motion and shaking one would expect from it, Steele said.

Take the same earthquake and place it close to the Earth's surface, and the ground motion could be 10 times worse, he said.

Worse yet could be a subduction zone earthquake of magnitude 8 or higher, triggered by the oceanic and continental plates jamming together then wrenching apart. It could be many times stronger and last for minutes, not seconds.

The last one occurred 300 years ago.

Shifting trends

But some of the precautions the region needs to take to withstand a severe quake have simply become part of the landscape of life -- including every time a new building is constructed.

The art of designing buildings to withstand earthquakes has changed dramatically over time, said state Department of Natural Resources geologist Tim Walsh.

"We used to make buildings stronger to resist seismic force," he said. Now, the trend is toward designing buildings that are more ductile, capable of rocking and rolling with the punches that a big quake delivers.

And buildings are being designed to tie into site-specific ground conditions identified through scientific research and lessons learned from past earthquakes, Walsh said.

"Sometimes we look at the requirements and costs and say, 'Wow,' " said Stephen Masini, an Olympia architect. "After Wednesday, we really know why our wow was worthwhile."

It comes as no surprise that most of the buildings inspectors have tagged as structurally unsafe after the quake are older structures, many of them unreinforced brick buildings.

"For an event this size, a relatively small number of buildings were red-tagged," Walsh said.

Unfortunately, many of the red-tagged buildings in downtown Olympia are historically significant, said Shanna Stevenson, a senior planner with the Thurston Regional Planning Council.

"They're so important to our downtown," she said. "Their loss would leave big holes in our city."

Parkway's fate

The earthquake also is an opportunity to rethink the status quo. The Deschutes Parkway is a case in point.

The state-owned roadway was severely damaged in the 1965 earthquake, rebuilt, then severely damaged again Wednesday.

Even before the Wednesday quake, state officials were looking at $10 million in restoration work for the urban road linking Olympia to Tumwater. Experts now are questioning whether it makes sense to pour more money into a roadway prone to failure in a quake.

"Maybe it's time to look at a new concept," said Olympia wetlands biologist Steve Shanewise.

He said city and state officials should consider removing the heavily damaged section of road between Lakeridge Drive and the Fifth Avenue Bridge, replacing it several hundred feet to the east with a bridge and causeway that would allow for both a free-flowing Deschutes River and a separate Capitol Lake fed by artesian wells and highly treated wastewater.

The cost of such a project and a host of other logistical issues have not been reviewed.

The earthquake also may make seismic retrofitting of public buildings an easier sell with lawmakers and taxpayers alike.

Gov. Gary Locke's budget includes an $89 million renovation of Capitol Campus buildings. That project may have garnered new support after Wednesday.

John Dodge covers the environment for The Olympian. He can be reached at 754-5444.

The Olympian Copyright 2000

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