Mike Salsbury/The Olympian
Starbucks employees Desi Saylors (left) and Michelle Robinson volunteer smiles while delivering free coffee to cold, wet workers clearing rubble from a downtown Olympia sidewalk.

In time of need, people of South Sound excel

JIM CARLILE, THE OLYMPIAN

OLYMPIA -- The streets had never looked so crowded to K.D. Seeley.

She looked through the traffic jam into the cars and saw fear on everyone's face.

Fear for loved ones and their children at school. Fear of aftershocks and fear of damage to their homes.

Amid the traffic, confusion and adrenaline, people were being kind and gracious to each other, said Seeley, a spokeswoman for the Olympia Police Department. They were letting cars from side roads onto the main road, nobody was honking and no tempers were lost.

"It was the most orderly, nonpanicked thing I've ever seen," she said.

Seeley wasn't surprised to see it, though.

"This is the community I live in. It's a place where people care about people. If you see someone in dire straits here, you help them," she said.

That's the attitude of most locals. Everyone knew there wouldn't be mayhem and looting. Instead, many expected South Sound residents to band together and help those in need.

"I was born and raised here. This was exactly the sort of higher level of operation that I expected from locals," said Ken Hansen, tribal chairman of the Samish Indian Nation in Anacortes. "Tourists and newer arrivals I don't expect that much from."

When the quake hit, Hansen was on the fifth floor of the Ramada Inn downtown.

"At one point, I wasn't sure the building was going to make it," said Hansen, who uses a wheelchair for anything other than short distances.

Immediately after the quake, Ramada employees checked on people in every room to make sure everyone was safe.

With water cascading down the stairwell, a hotel employee helped Hansen down the steps.

"The hotel staff was as well-trained as if they were firefighters," he said. "These folks are a credit to the Olympia community. There was just a communal feeling everywhere downtown."

After filing back into the building, hotel employees doled out free hot food. Two sight-impaired people wandered into the lobby off the street and were treated like royalty, Hansen said. They weren't even guests at the hotel. Nobody was turned away, he said.

Soon after the earthquake when many were still panicked, students at Roosevelt Elementary were calmed by workers from the San Francisco Street Bakery across the street. Employees handed out free cookies for the school's 300-plus students.

After the panic of the quake was over and the big damage assessed, the cleanup began downtown.

"We gave out free coffee to people working on the cleanup," said Desi Saylors, a Starbucks worker.

While the earthquake was a hands-on lesson in seismology to many locals, a few middle school students knew just what to expect.

Two weeks after students raised $1,000 for victims of El Salvador's Jan. 13 earthquake, two Komachin Middle School teachers had good things to say about their students.

"It was wild at the school -- yet strangely calm," said Vicki Leonard, one of the teachers.

"By the time I told them to get under their desks, they were already there," said Dixie Reimer, another Komachin teacher.

Experiencing an earthquake helped students better understand why they raised money for people in El Salvador, they said.

The students weren't the only ones prepared for the tremor.

Ronen Johnson, a student at The Evergreen State College, was in a chemistry class when the building began to shake. He directed people into doorways, he said, and once everyone got out, Johnson shuttled people to the parking lots.

John Devoy and Sarah Aanrud both work for Evergreen housing and they said the college staff banded together to help. There was a communal feeling on campus as people gathered in a nearby soccer field, Aanrud said.

"The outpouring of help has just been amazing," the Olympia Police Department's Seeley said. "We've had neighbors helping other neighbors and people checking on elderly neighbors to make sure they're OK. Displaced people found homes with community members. Only 15 people had to stay at the Red Cross shelter."

Jim Carlile writes for The Olympian. He can be reached at 357-0204.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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