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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