Rampo

When I worked in downtown DC we had fire drills and - post September 11 - gas, bacteriological warfare, and dirty bomb drills, but never had an earthquake drill.

T8191

I'm pleased to discover that all our friends are OK, and that the overall casualty list appears to be a big Zero.

For the heroic cynics, who decry Health and Safety thinking ... goingaway wins the prize. ^
Your confidence in the structural integrity of any building after an earthquake is impressive, as is your complete failure to understand the word "aftershock".

May the Farce be with you ...

GoingAway

... and Congratulations on your full-fledged membership to our overly risk adverse society. Are there some buildings with possible issues? Sure and those buildings/structures should be checked, do they all really need to be closed? NO, definitely not. Is there likely any building in this area about to be condemned due to safety concerns after that shake? Highly unlikely. The blanket liberal leave policy and closures that are in place today are due to poor communication, poor management and insufficient resources being available to correctly check the structures and manage this process.

Happily no one was injured, yet the financial implications to many businesses and the overreaction of the people haven't been measured, and likely won't be. That impact includes the federal over reaction and early dismissal of way too many people, it just shows a lack of good business continuity and disaster recovery planning on their parts that the workers aren't being accomodated elsewhere, or the dismissal managed with less impact (I was struck by some woman's quote who worked in Falls Church, when it hit, she was on the 3rd floor of her building at work, she walked out, got in her car and drove home ... ummm, don't you still have a job to do? Were you told to leave? Did work close for the day? No, she just left)

Your memberships likely puts you on TSA "anything for security" approach to life, as well. I am happy to reject all such memberships, myself.

You want to go where?

I had presumed that the liberal leave policy was to allow parents whose childrens' schools or day care had closed to allow them to care for their children. As they are taking leave to which they are already entitled (just at a time not previously scheduled), I don't have a big problem with this, especially in August when things slow down in Washington anyway.

As far as "insufficient resources being available to correctly check the structures and manage this process", I would hope that the Federal and Local governments would have insufficient resources to respond to a once in a century event. If they didn't, it would mean that they have too many resources 99.99% of the time.

I do agree that the early dismissal seemed unwarranted and caused more problems than it solved.

T8191

Not overly risk-averse, actually. A 30-year military career just gave me an understanding of what's sensible/safe and what isn't, under certain circumstances.

My bad ... I guess I would be more concerned about the safety of my people in that earthquake scenario that the generation of "productivity"/$$$$.
You clearly have a different angle on life, so I doubt we'll ever agree.

I still think TSA sucks, if that's any comfort to you.

mhnadel

Even more fun being near the top of one of those towers. No damage here on the 26th floor, but my other office, on the first floor of a building in Crystal City, has a lot of cracks.

T8191

Has anyone seen the courageous goingaway lately?

Good luck with the weekend's weather event. I remember arriving 24 hours after Isobel in 2003 ... not a pretty or safe sight.

Global_Hi_Flyer

I gotta stand with GoingAway on this one. Once the earthquake was done, the chance of immediate damage was substantially minimized. Out of my office window, I watched plenty of fools standing outside, but immediately below buildings in Rosslyn - many of them were DHS employees. You know, the folks that tell us how we should act in the event of a disaster?

Had there been danger of falling stuff post-quake, those folks would have been in a world of hurt. And in the unlikely event the buildings had collapsed - it really wouldn't have mattered if they were inside or out.

As for aftershocks, they are virtually always of lower intensity than the main quake. Usually by a substantial amount. (Yes, I know about pre-shocks). We knew the intensity quite quickly, the risk was materially lower.

She's around. I believe she canceled her mileage run this weekend...

scubadiver

My office sounded the fire alarm, forcing evacuation.