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Earthquake Commemorative Section
10:54 A.M. - FEBRUARY 28, 2001 Olympia bears brunt of 6.8 quake THE OLYMPIAN STAFF "It's amazing that no people were standing under some of these buildings when things started to fall. If they had been, they'd be dead." -- Stan Biles, Olympia mayor
"All you could hear was people yelling, 'Take cover,' and the noise of the building as books, chairs and parts of the ceiling fell to the floor." -- Leo Scarpelli, Olympia library worker
"I just got here from Texas. We get hurricanes and tornadoes, but our ground stays put." -- Richard Gomez, teacher
"It felt like a big ol' tidal wave. ... I thought it was fun at first, but then it kept going on, so I got in a doorway." -- Leeroy Cohen, North Thurston student
"It's going to take a long time to get back to where we were." -- Sam Costello, Olympia police officer, surveying damage in downtown Olympia
It was 45 seconds that many of us will never forget, that we'll be recalling over and over. "I remember during the quake of '01 ... "
At 10:54 a.m. Feb. 28, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake pushed and shoved its way up from 30 miles under the Nisqually Delta with the force of an atomic bomb. In many places, the initial jolt sounded and felt like an explosion, then rumbled on, setting the whole Puget Sound region shimmying.
"It felt like the end of the world. It felt very frightening," said Casey McKee, an employee at Fifth Avenue Fabric & Clothing in Olympia.
Buildings swayed as far away as central Oregon, Spokane and British Columbia. Initial state estimates set damage at $2 billion. The state was declared a disaster area, though power, telephone and water systems largely remained intact and working.
Miraculously, there was no loss of life. The injured numbered in the hundreds, with about 50 of those in Olympia. Many of the complaints were of chest pains caused by quake-related anxiety.
It was the area's strongest quake since 1949, when a similar quake rose up from nearly the same spot. And it left deep scars on western Washington communities.
Downtown Olympia was the worst hit.
Dozens of buildings sustained damage and were left at least temporarily uninhabitable, cordoned off from the public by chain-link fencing guarded by police. Debris from the facades of downtown Olympia buildings littered streets and sidewalks.
Dozens of people who lived in downtown apartments were left temporarily homeless, tended to by a makeshift shelter the Red Cross set up at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on Olympia's west side. Many downtown workers were left wondering what the future would hold.
"For us, everything is unknown -- whether we can stay, when we can reopen," said Joey Larocque, whose family business, The Painted Plate on Washington Street, was damaged.
The Fourth Avenue bridge, which already was slated to be replaced, visibly buckled and bowed, and was closed indefinitely, cutting off the most used route into downtown from the west side. Deschutes Parkway was closed after the quake corrugated the road encircling Capitol Lake.
The Capitol Campus -- strewn with fallen plaster, broken glass and a tossed salad of paperwork and peppered with cracked walls and marble -- was shut down immediately, idling more than 10,000 state workers from nearly 20 buildings. The stone exterior of the Capitol dome cracked and shifted three-quarters of an inch.
State lawmakers suspended their half-completed legislative session for the rest of the week.
While the quake left many shaken, ultimately it also left us grateful that the worst had not happened.
"We took a big hit from Mother Nature," said Olympia Mayor Stan Biles. "It's amazing that no people were standing under some of these buildings when things started to fall. If they had been, they'd be dead."
Downtown drama
Downtown Olympia was the focus of much of the concern immediately after the quake.
As many as 15 residents of the Olympian Apartments were unaccounted for shortly after the quake, but rescue workers located all of the residents of the historic former hotel, which also is home to The Urban Onion restaurant and the Fireside Book Store.
None of the residents was injured, but 52 residents, most of them elderly, were displaced.
Skookum Bay Outfitters lost a portion of its facade, which crashed into the adjacent alleyway, blocking the alley entirely. The Washington Federal building's terra cotta facade crumbled onto the sidewalk below.
A beam also dislodged on the eighth floor of the Ramada Inn Governor House, prompting its evacuation.
Joel Staloch and Mike Mendoza watched from across Water Street as a two-foot wall on the roof of the American Legion building crumbled during the quake.
"It just dropped like a sheet," said Staloch, who was working on a construction crew at nearby Heritage Park.
"One woman driving by in a van nearly got hit," added Mendoza, his co-worker.
Joanna Cashman of Wild Grace Arts Center for Yoga and Dance, next door to the American Legion building, was teaching a class when the earthquake hit.
"Reality started to shift a bit," she said with a nervous laugh.
Getting around
The Fourth Avenue bridge received the brunt of the quake damage.
Sidewalks on both sides of the bridge were littered with the crumbled remains of concrete railings, and the roadway dipped visibly in the center of the span.
The bowing had been visible before the quake but was more pronounced afterward, said Jay Burney, a project manager for the city of Olympia.
Deschutes Parkway resembled an accordion after the quake, and the image of its warped sidewalk quickly became an icon for the quake across the country.
Many portions of other downtown roads were blocked off because of building damage nearby.
But damage made transportation difficult all over the region.
A stretch of Martin Way from Ensign to Lilly Road was reduced to two lanes of traffic after the road buckled at both edges.
Dirt below an underground gas line in the area also shifted, leaving the line suspended but intact.
Northbound U.S. Highway 101 was closed just north of state Route 8 because of a landslide. Amtrak and freight trains stopped operation for track and safety inspections.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was closed for hours because of damage to a control tower. All shipping traffic on Puget Sound was halted.
School's out
The school day was just hitting its stride when the quake struck, sending children streaming from their buildings onto sunny playgrounds.
Moms and dads quickly began arriving at the school grounds to provide needed hugs and claim their children for the day.
Local colleges too came to a halt.
All of South Sound's schools were closed the following day as well, as structural engineers inspected each school for damage.
All but three schools in Thurston County passed that inspection. Capital High School, Avanti High School, and Lincoln Elementary School, all in Olympia, remained closed.
Structural damage was found in the east end of Lincoln, and officials determined late in the week that Lincoln students would be moving into nearby churches for classes the next week.
Meanwhile, structural damage also was found in the north end of the Knox Administrative Center, which houses the administrative offices as well as Avanti Alternative High School.
At Capital High, ceiling tiles and the support grid that holds the tiles in place needed to be repaired.
Repairs in North Thurston schools were minimal, administrators said, consisting of ceiling tile repairs in the gymnasium at North Thurston High School and cleanup in a classroom at Woodland Elementary School.
Tumwater administrators said they were relieved to get the go-ahead to resume classes in all their schools.
"I think we're in a bit better shape than Olympia and North Thurston," said Debby Carter, director of district projects in the Tumwater School District. The Olympian Copyright 2001 back to main Earthquake Stories index
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