Seattle relieved quake damage not worse

Seattle relieved quake damage not worse
Reuters

MAR 2: Western Washington breathed a collective sigh of relief at the relatively minor damage caused by Wednesday's powerful earthquake and life began to return to normal for most residents on Friday.

Officials called it a miracle that only one death had been linked to the 6.8-magnitude quake, the strongest in Washington in more than half a century, which cracked bridges, triggered landslides and caused more than $1 billion in damage.

Many workers at Seattle corporate icons Starbucks Corp and Boeing Co had begun returning to work, but not necessarily to their normal workplace, as the coffee roaster and the aerospace giant scrambled to relocate from buildings badly damaged by the quake.

Only a smattering of schools stayed closed on Friday and most major roads were open, though a few scarred bridges and sunken roadways were expected to take weeks to repair.

Washington state Governor Gary Locke, who estimated damage would top $1 billion, expressed relief that the damage was relatively minor for such a violent quake - a fact attributed to its occurring at a depth of 30 miles (48 kms).

"We were very, very lucky," Locke told local cable television station NWCN. "There could have been utter catastrophe had it been higher, closer to the surface, or it had even been on the Seattle fault," which runs directly under the state's largest city, which has about 540,000 residents.

The quake, Washington's biggest since a 7.1-magnitude temblor in 1949 killed eight people, occurred on another fault 10 miles (16 kms) northeast of the state capital, Olympia.

Most residents slept through two mild aftershocks that hit the region early Thursday measuring 3.4 and 2.7 and causing no new damage. Seismologists said the depth of Wednesday's quake made severe aftershocks unlikely.

A spokesman for the US Geological Survey said the 3.4 aftershock was felt at 1:10 a.m. PST (4:10 a.m. EST) (0910 GMT) about 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Tacoma, along the same fault line as Wednesday's major quake.

The second aftershock came about five hours later and was centered 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Olympia at a depth of 32 miles (51 km).

Wednesday's quake was considered strong enough to cause extensive damage and injuries, but there was only one report of a fatality. A 66-year-old woman from Burien, a Seattle suburb near the airport, died of a heart attack after the quake, King County officials said.

But later the county backtracked, saying the exact cause of death was unclear.

The quake sent 206 people to hospitals in King County, including three people still in intensive care - one who suffered a heart attack, another with a fractured pelvis and the third hurt in a motor vehicle accident.

President George W Bush declared western Washington state a disaster area, making available federal grants and loans to cover emergency housing and uninsured property losses and to help local agencies repair public facilities.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh flew to Washington state to survey the damage and praised local preparedness at a news conference.

Still, experts said no amount of seismic retrofitting or emergency drills would prevent tens of billions of dollars in damages if a similar-sized quake hit near the surface, which could liquefy the ground under roads and buildings.

"I cannot believe how lucky you guys are," said Peter Yanev, President of EQE International, an engineering firm specializing in disaster analysis.

Yanev said preliminary analysis showed total quake damage could run to $2 billion, a fraction of the damage Seattle would see if a 7.0 quake hit the Seattle fault.

"That's a low probability event, but it happened 300 years ago and it could generate $50 (billion) to $75 billion in damage and kill a few thousand people. Some of the big buildings will go down," Yanev said.

Cheered by the rapid return of shoppers to downtown city sidewalks, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell said the city was once again open for business.

Several stretches of elevated highways and on-ramps were closed for inspection and some supports showed signs of damage that could take a week or more to repair. But in general, much of the damage was cosmetic, not structural.

"Generally speaking, I think the public is very safe," said Seattle architect David Clark, who chairs a disaster preparedness team for the American Institute of Architects.

Wednesday's quake cracked the dome of the state Capitol in Olympia, sent bricks tumbling from historic buildings in Pioneer Square, the nation's first skid row, trapped people at the top of Seattle's landmark Space Needle from the 1962 World's Fair and triggered landslides that plugged the river that delivers the city's water.

It knocked out electric service to about 230,000 homes and businesses, but the local energy grid held up well, and power was quickly restored to all but a handful of customers, utility officials said.

The same could be said for local natural gas distribution pipelines, with the few ruptured lines either already patched or shut down awaiting a repair crew.