Quaking

The disastrous ways of nature and human kind

In the Midwest where I came from tornadoes and hundred-year snowstorms that strike every couple years are the resident threats to life and limb. I viewed them scary, but mostly survivable.

Earthquakes, on the other hand, were the stuff of disaster movies...mythic. So, when I told my Midwest friends I was moving to the Pacific Northwest, they told me I was crazy...sure to die in “the big one.” That is the major earthquake predicted to destroy the entire West Coast when California’s tectonic plates break loose from the continent and push Cascadia into British Columbia with a nine-point shove on the Richter scale.

Blithely, I scoffed at their doomsday prediction, packed my belongings and moved to this bucolic island in Puget Sound west of Seattle. In the process, of course, I had to work to pay for my life in this lush northern jungle. Five years in I found myself working for a fancy PR firm in the heart of Seattle’s oldest metro area, Pioneer Square. At that time, the location enjoyed a somewhat hip reputation surrounded by historic buildings that housed boutique hotels and upscale restaurants. My building, vintage 1920s or so, was 12 stories tall with our offices occupying the entire third floor.

I was new to this class of PR and marketing that had close ties to city and county government, supporting their civic and environmental projects. I enjoyed working with highly creative colleagues on campaigns I could care about...the Friday night martini clinics were a social bonus.

Then just before lunch time February 28, 2001, I was ‘seated’ in the ladies’ room when the Nisqually Earthquake rocked our building like a skiff on a storm swept sea. My mind raced as I promised myself my children would NOT learn that I had died with my pants around my ankles in a fancy bathroom stall. I engaged my Kegels, pulled up my drawers and walked through the swaying hallway on sea legs until I reached the black marble elevator door. There I planted my right hand high on the door frame and posed as if I was perfectly calm amid the chaos. Some folks were crying, some screaming or scrambling they knew not where. Others were assuming leadership roles and encouraging calm preparations to exit the building. I was, beneath my calm exterior, imagining those nine floors above us collapsing around our chic heads.

Records of that day say the shaking lasted only about 90 seconds. Ha! In that brief moment, the Nisqually’s 6.8 magnitude rattle – with its epicenter nearly 50 miles away – caused about $2 billion in damages, a lot of that in Seattle’s old Pioneer Square. The buildings there were not earthquake proofed and the reclaimed land they were built on liquefied...for just a little while.

Luckily, nobody died and lots of zoning laws got changed to retrofit the city’s old masonry buildings with concrete reinforcement and ensure that new building were prepared to resist earthquakes.

My colleagues and I took the afternoon off to recover. I went home to my island sanctuary which I shared with a housemate at the time. I was feeling pretty proud of the composure I’d maintained during the natural disaster, though I’ve no memory at all of the rest of that day.

About a week later, a 2am windstorm broke a tree branch near my house with a thunderous crack! In seconds, I leapt from my bed, flew downstairs and out the back door to land on the grass panting and sobbing. My poor housemate heard the frantic exit and ran outside to find me in an emotional puddle. “What the hell are you doing?!” he yelled over the wind. “Earthquake!” I replied. “I’m escaping the earthquake!”

Apparently the Nisqually shock was buried deep in my psyche lying in wait for another trigger.

Since then, I’ve experienced other, smaller quakes mostly visiting my kids in Los Angeles. One night as we were watching TV in their living room, there was a bump that felt like someone had driven a tank into the back of the house. My son, the one who loves to cheat death, jumped up on the coffee table and started mock surfing as he cackled in defiance of that mean old quake. I was okay that time in the company of loved ones.

Six months after Nisqually, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York. Nine-eleven was a moment like no other, in which every one of us remembers exactly where we were. By that time, I had parted ways with the fancy Seattle PR firm and mourned the unimaginable tragedy with my community of friends and family as we watched the eerily quiet skies and waited...for another trigger?

I think often of the average people in Gaza, Iran, Israel, the Middle East in general and feel their constant terror. The memories of my own comparatively mild experiences return more vivid than usual as I wake each morning to the latest threats hovering over us as deranged leaders rattle the massively destructive power they hold in their tiny human hands. Disaster looms once again, and there’s nothing natural about it.

Photo courtesy Thom Hartmann