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King County has advised that Sea-Tac runway has suffered significant damage and may be closed for several days!

I work in an office tower in Portland, where the quake was discernible and quite scary.

At the moment that the quake struck, I was on the phone with a client in Tacoma, who was explaining to me why the City of Portland was requiring him to do more than was necessary to put seismic upgrades in a building he owns in Portland. Then I heard the earthquake at his house (quite loud; he lives near the epicenter), and two seconds later I felt it here. Our phone connection was cut off.

I think his opinion about seismic upgrades has improved since this morning.

Law Lord,

How is everything in Portland right now? All I am seeing are stories from Seattle. Nothing on Portland.

Hope you are safe and OK.

William

Yep, it was a big one. I had just touched down at SEA and was headed for the gate when the 737 started bouncing up and down. It took a minute to figure out what was going on. They had evacuated the airport by the time we got off.

I wonder if AS gives earthquake bonus miles?

wharvey, thanks for your message.

Our tower shook for about 20 seconds but without apparent damage. The shaking subsided and then started again maybe a minute later, not so actively. The tower continued to sway for several minutes. I would guess that the top was moving back and forth several inches. (I'm about 20 floors up, fairly near the top.) When the 1993 quake hit I was in a wood-frame house and not a steel frame tower, but allowing for that difference I would think this quake was felt more heavily in Portland than the smaller-but-closer 1993 quake. The Seattle reports are much worse in terms of damage - the courts and airport are closed, communications are damaged, and traffic is a mess.

There appeared to be no significant damage in Portland, and no injuries reported so far. I would imagine that in wood-frame houses and smaller buildings, things fell off shelves. In a warehouse about 10 miles south of town, some racks and pallets collapsed along with their contents, but no one was injured. I would expect that tomorrow's paper will report some minor damage here and there around Portland. Seattle has it much worse that Portland in this quake.

The Geological Service (or whoever monitors volcanoes) said that the shock took about five seconds to travel from Mt. St. Helens (closer to the epicenter) to Mt. Hood (about 40 miles farther).



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"If you want to win the game, write the rules."

Sorry for lack of first hand posting here, but after the quake was brought to my attention (by a FT'er) I called my place back in SEA at first chance.

It was the first quake two of my roommates had experienced and they said that the "50 second" time period seemed to last about 2 minutes or so. Half of that time was to figure out what exactly was going on.

Living in the Ballard section of SEA, all that my house experienced was some pictures coming off the wall, and some moving of the furniture.

Obviously, other info can be found throughout the net, but I am hoping the other Pacific NW FT'ers made it through fine.

In regard to quakes and other disasters, have you noticed, that the U.S. is fast to send aid and supplies to other countries?

Have you ever heard of any other country sending supplies or aid to help the U.S. victims? Any explanations for this?

Canadians and Europeans also normally send aid following natural disasters; however, these contributions are rarely reported by the mainstream media in third countries. Consequently most Americans would be unaware that other countries help out too, unless they read non-American news reports.
I hope and expect that we north of the 49th will send help. We felt the quake here in YVR.

Most flights to and from SEA have been cancelled for this afternoon and evening. Some international flights have landed. The runway is in good condition, but there is concern about a fuel pipeline and airlines do not want to strand their planes at Seatac.

The glass in the ATC Control Tower is completely gone and the upper roadway of the terminal is closed. I would be very surprised if operations resemble anything close to normal on Thursday.

Flights that were airborne at the time of the quake weree diverted to PDX, Spokane and Boise.

I hope Punki and her family are okay. Any other Pacific NW FTers out there? I pray that all are safe and sound.

This morning one of the local TV stations cut to live coverage by KING in Seattle. They said the Seattle area is more seismically active than California. Who knew?

I just got back from SNA last night, good thing, I hate being gone when major events happen.

My city borders the city of Tacoma. We are 25 miles south of Seattle and 30 miles north of Olympia, this yeilds about 10 miles from the epicenter.

I am a volunteer firefighter for my city so I responded to the HIRL, High Incedient Reponse Levels, but we only had a power outage here. I have noticed that there are quite a few FTers locally, and one in Puyallup, which had several things going on, broken gas line, ruptured LPG tank, and a house fire, not all at the same location.

Lots of roads and bridges closed, but they are starting to open up now.

My house is less then a year old so I was very pleased to see that nothing major happened to it. I don't have earthquake insurance.

The experts have been predicting "the big one" in the Pacific NW for quite a while -- let's hope this was it. Considering the magnitude and reach of this one, we're all considering ourselves pretty lucky that the injuries, loss of life, and property damage weren't a lot worse.

I was on the 18th floor of a building with about 50 stories, one that is on "rollers" for earthquake protection. It was a pretty mindboggling experience. My 90 year old house, which has been through these several times before over the last century, did just fine, with nothing damaged at all!

Hope everyone else up here in the NW is doing well.

I tried calling Punki earlier today but couldn't get through. I just tried again and the circuits are still busy. I do hope that she and Joe are ok.