Bush declares state of emergency in Washington

E-mail this article Print this article Other links Capitol Campus: swaying, praying A double whammy in Pioneer Square Gates shakes with the masses Analysis: KIRO-TV's coverage was first, best Web cams with earthquake footage Renton-area residents flee river of mud Shaken schools hold their ground Art Walk shakes off the shakes, goes right on The right place at the right time Photo gallery: Earthquake More than 270 treated at area hospitals Want earthquake insurance? You may have to wait Travelers frantically sought news of quake, loved ones President Bush is pledging federal help in the aftermath of the Washington State earthquake.

President George W. Bush declared the entire state of Washington a disaster area Thursday evening, clearing the way for federal relief for damage from Wednesday's earthquake.

Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received word from the White House while touring the damaged Magnolia Bridge with Mayor Paul Schell in Seattle.

The President signed Gov. Gary Locke's request for federal aid shortly after 5 p.m. Seattle time.

Allbaugh said the next step is a disaster declaration designating six counties for immediate help. The counties are King, Kitsap, Lewis, Mason, Pierce and Thurston.

Allbaugh said that as head of FEMA he can add counties to that list if further inspections find major earthquake damage.

In a request handed to Allbaugh earlier in the day, Locke asked for help in temporary housing, grants and loans for owners of damaged property and money to help local governments pay for earthquake response and damage to government buildings and roads.

At Bush's request, the FEMA director has been touring earthquake-damaged areas in Western Washington all day, following Wednesday's 6.8 shaker, strongest in the state in more than 50 years.

He was accompanied by U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and members of the congressional delegation. Talking about Western Washington's focus on earthquake preparedness in recent years, Allbaugh said, "It paid off."

"I'm just stunned that there hasn't been greater loss of life."

In good news for commuters, both the southbound and northbound lanes of the Alaskan Way Viaduct were reopened Thursday afternoon in time for the rush-hour commute. The so-called Highway 99 route, which includes the Viaduct and parts of a South Spokane Street interchange, was closed soon after the quake while state inspectors checked for damage.

Some supports that had been installed to limit earthquake damage did fail, and parts of the supports fell to the ground at places along the route, but the installations worked as intended and prevented other damage.

"They did what they were supposed to do," said Pat Moylan, state bridge maintenance engineer. "I'm glad it's still standing."

Closing the heavily traveled Viaduct made the Thursday morning commute from West Seattle to downtown a 1 ½ to 2 hour nightmare. Before the reopening was announced, one veteran traffic reporter was recommending that afternoon commuters "leave incredibly early, allow a ton of extra time, treat each other with kindness and keep their radios turned on.''

Also Thursday morning, two aftershocks were reported in the same area as the earthquake's epicenter, about 11 miles northeast of Olympia. The University of Washington's Seismology Lab reported a 2.7 aftershock at 6:23 a.m. today, and a 3.4 aftershock at 1:10 a.m.

Neither caused any apparent damage.

Yesterday's 10:54 a.m. quake, thundered across Western Washington, shaking buildings, shattering windows, rattling nerves and running up an estimated $1 billion tab in damage. It was felt from the Canadian border to Eugene and east to Salt Lake City.

But, astoundingly, it appeared that not a single person died in the quake, though there were scores of mostly minor injuries.

By this morning, the Emergency Operations Center at Fort Lewis was reporting that 272 people in King, Pierce and Thurston counties had suffered mainly cuts and bruises, with a few broken bones. All but a few were released from hospitals.

Locke, speaking at a news conference in Olympia Thursday morning, said the state was quickly getting back to business though thousands of state employees still don't have anywhere to work. The two main legislative office buildings were found to be structurally safe and workers could begin returning there in the afternoon to help with clean up.

But structural engineers were still inspecting the Capitol building. "We're really encouraged by what we've seen," said Michael Wright, an engineer with the Seattle firm of Swenson Say Faget. For 2 ½ years Wright has worked on the building in preparation of an extensive renovation of the Legislative Building. "It'll be a big clean up."

Schell also held a news briefing Thursday morning. The good news is there is no news," he said, remarking on the city's rapid return - for the most part -- to business as usual.

Schell said the city's preparation and rapid response paid off - from school kids who ducked under desks like they'd been taught to bridges that stood up thanks to seismic upgrades over the past few years.

"In times like these, we see the best of ourselves," Schell said.

Some problems persist, though, such as the Magnolia Bridge, which could cost $1 million and take two to six months to repair, said Daryl Grigsby, director of the city's transportation department. The bridge had not been seismically upgraded like many of the city's other major spans.

Meanwhile, twelve buildings have been "red tagged" as unfit for occupancy until they are repaired and cleared by licensed structural engineers, said Rick Krochalis, director of the Department of Design, Construction and Land Use. Ten more have been recommended for red tags by the fire department, he said.

At one point after the earthquake, some 200,000 people were without power as circuit breakers were tripped across the region. Area utility companies said Thursday morning that nearly all power has been restored, though City Light reported a dozen scattered outages that should be fixed later in the morning.

Colman Dock, which was closed to ferry traffic immediately after the quake, was reopened yesterday afternoon.

"The reports I have to date are that all the boats are operational," said Russ East, director of terminal engineering for the Washington State Ferries. "I have not heard about any vessels not running."

They may be off-schedule on Vashon because there's one slip in operation, and that sometimes slows the schedule."

The bus system was up and running normally, except for routes in and around bridge and roadway closures, said Rick Walsh, general manager for Metro Transit. As of 5 a.m. Thursday, the Metro Transit Tunnel was open, as was the 16th Avenue South Bridge. Sea-Tac International Airport was also operating, though damage to the control tower has restricted takeoffs from 40 an hour to about 25 an hour.

Telephone calls increased sixfold immediately after the quake, with many callers encountering busy circuits. Wireless carriers were swamped, with one in every three calls not going through as networks were overloaded.

Qwest Communications phone service in Washington and Oregon was back up, Qwest spokesperson Michael Dunne said Thursday, though Qwest was urging customers to restrict their phone usage to only emergency calls. Continued high volumes were still keeping many cell calls from going through Thursday.

The damage could have been far worse had not the area's largest buildings and structures been retrofitted. Also, this quake was particularly deep beneath the Earth's surface, originating more than 30 miles below the Nisqually Delta, 11 miles northeast of Olympia, where a massive piece of ocean crust is slowly being driven beneath the continental crust.

A more shallow earthquake would likely have been much more destructive.

"There would have been lots, lots more damage," said Locke. "We're coming through this quake in relatively good shape."

The earthquake's epicenter was nearly the same as the last quake of this power, a magnitude 7.1 tremblor that struck April 13, 1949. That quake resulted in eight deaths and damage to 1,100 buildings.

The magnitude-6.7 Northridge quake in Los Angeles in 1994 struck just 11 miles underground. It caused an estimated $40 billion in damage and killed 72 people.

Sensors at the UW's Seismology Lab said the ground moved for 15 to 20 seconds. Buildings continued to vibrate and sway for at least as long afterwards.

"It seemed like it went on forever," said Claire Gilchrist, a contract attorney for the Preston, Gates & Ellis law firm, who rode out the quake halfway up the 76-story Columbia Tower, Seattle's tallest building.

Other, deeper vibrations continued coming to the UW lab for another 20 or so minutes.

Workers throughout the region were quickly evacuated. Homeward-bound workers created a midday traffic jam as they flooded onto roadways. Many roads were closed for inspections, including the two-level Viaduct.

A long list of damaged buildings includes the Seattle Municipal Building, the King County Courthouse, the under-construction Seahawks stadium, Starbucks corporate headquarters in Seattle, Puyallup High School, the Hotel Olympian in Olympia, the Icon Grill in Seattle and the Cadillac Hotel Building in Pioneer Square, home of the Fenix Underground.

Also closed: Amtrak and freight rail traffic through Seattle was also closed while officials inspected tracks.

The quake spawned a million stories as it shook trees and moved cars, knocked pictures from walls, moved furniture and smashed 200 bottles of wine at DeLaurenti Specialty Foods in the Pike Place Market. The $55 top-shelf bottles fell furthest and hardest.

"It was a very complex aroma," said Steve Springston, wine buyer.

It pulled down brick walls, including like the one by the Seahawks offices off First Avenue South.

"When I came around the corner, the wall fell and crushed my car flatter than a pancake," said Dave Cronin, 41, the housekeeping manager at First and Goal, Paul Allen's Seahawks offices. His car was crushed by a brick wall that fell into a parking lot off First Avenue South.

Rick Tompkins of Perkins Glass spent the morning replacing two huge windows on the Elliott Bay Book Co., which that had been broken during a Mardi Gras riot about nine hours 12 hours or so earlier. He had just stepped back from his job when the quake hit, breaking them again.

A woman in her 60s died of a heart attack in Burien at about the time of the quake, and some media outlets reported that as caused by the quake. However, the King County medical examiner's office said there was no evidence of that.

Overall, the quake reached into almost every aspect of daily life:

Transportation

Roads, bridges and airport runways shook and rattled throughout the region, but for the most part came through the quake in decent shape.

The control tower at Sea-Tac took one of the most dramatic hits. "The windows were blown out," said Allen Kenitzer, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

FAA workers stayed on and safely landed all the planes in the air at the time. Then they abandoned the building and fired up backup equipment in a tractor-trailer that allowed the airport to resume a limited schedule.

Seattle-bound flights that had yet to depart were held on the ground, affecting about 8,000 passengers. In all, 80 flights were canceled.

The ferry system temporarily suspended service and the Colman Ferry Terminal was closed for much of the day is closed because of damage. But ferries were running again by mid-afternoon.

Sound Transit's commuter trains between Seattle and Tacoma were running, but Amtrak service through Seattle was canceled so safety inspections could be made.

Engineers have made their preliminary rounds of roads and bridges in the Seattle area, and with the exception of scattered road closures, engineers pronounced the streets safe for driving.

Drivers shouldn't worry about roads collapsing, said Melanie Moores, a spokeswoman for the DOT. "Just from what we've seen, I think people can feel pretty good," she said.

Among the roads that were closed were Southeast Jones Rd at 180th Avenue Southeast in Renton; East Lake Sammamish Road between Thomas Hill and Southeast 24th Street; (50 inch long crack) South Park Bridge Veazie-Cumberland Rd, between SE 416th St. and SE 392nd and Corbin Beach Rd Southwest, off Burma Road on Vashon Island. Highway 101 was buckled in places northwest of Olympia.

Department of Transportation officials said it will likely be a at least a couple of weeks before they permanently repair a section of Highway 2 that sank four inches near Gold Bar. DOT spokesman Greg Phipps said the quake caused the dirt beneath the road to settle at a spot just east of the Skykomish River bridge, creating a rounded depression that has a speed bump effect on cars. Workers lowered the speed limit there from 60 to 35 miles per hour both directions, then covered the spot with a temporary asphalt fix.

Crews will have to wait several weeks to permanently repair the road, and lift the speed restriction, because the work must be done in dry weather with a temperature of at least 50 degrees. They also need to wait until the ground there has had time to settle completely.

Utilities

Electric utilities reported local outages, most of them triggered when the jolt tripped circuit breakers. Although a reported 200,000 people were without power at some point, nearly all of it was restored by nightfall. Late in the afternoon, Seattle City Light and Puget Sound Energy each reported about 9,000 customers were still without power, but they expected to restore that power before nightfall.

"Both the gas and electrical systems came through in very good shape," said Grant Ringel of Puget Sound Energy, which provides both to much of the Puget Sound area. "When circuit breakers are tripped, we need to go out and inspect the lines before we close the breakers again. But we're finding very little damage."

Water service also appeared to have survived the quake. Although there was a landslide along the Cedar River, which provides much of the region's water supply, Seattle Public Utilities spokesman Paul Blake spokesman said the utility had detected no change in water pressure.

City of Snoqualmie officials are asking residents to boil all their drinking water, after a major water main break on River Street.

The Snohomish County Public Utilities District reported minimal power disruptions, said spokesman Neil Neroutsos. The largest outage, in an area northeast of Everett's Boeing plant, affected about 4,500 customers for 30 minutes, he said. Several hundred also lost power in the Sultan area. In both cases, the shaking apparently tripped circuit breakers.

Communications

Local phone and wireless networks were overwhelmed by call volume after the earthquake, although none sustained any damage to their networks.

Telecomunications companies estimated that calls jumped to six times normal traffic immediately following the shaking. Among wireless carriers, as much many as 30 percent of calls were blocked because of the network overload.

"We're experiencing really high call volume. Some calls go through; some don't," said Dunne, the spokesman for Qwest, the major phone services provider in the area... "If people can stay off the phone unless they need it for emergency, then call volume will drop, the network will reset and calls will get through."

Voice networks operate on a circuit network, which that can only handle a limited number of calls. Once the circuit switches are were full, callers got a fast busy signal or a recording.

Wireless carriers - Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless, Nextel and VoiceStream - were similarly overwhelmed by the number of people all trying to make calls at the same time. Unlike conventional phone networks, which block all traffic except for emergency calls during a crisis, wireless networks do not filter phone calls.

Calls between mobile phones fared slightly better than calls from mobile to landline phones because of the backup in the landline phone network. VoiceStream and AT&T Wireless reported that use of text messaging over wireless phones - tapping out short instant messages using the phone keypad - jumped as users realized that text messaging worked even though their voice calls weren't going through.

Voicestream reported that some cell sites were operating without commercial air conditioning power and switched to battery power.

Sprint PCS said 10 percent of its cell sites went were subjected to power outages before they switched to battery backup.

Ten of Nextel Communications' cell sites, or 2 percent of its Pacific Northwest network, were also affected by power outages and call volume. Nextel's office in Redmond was evacuated for a damage inspection.

Cingular Wireless, which had originally planned to introduce its service in the Northwest on Monday, also experienced power outages with some of itsr cell sites near the epicenter. The company said it will postone its launch until Wednesday because of the earthquake.

Verizon Wireless also said commercial power went down at five cell sites and one switching center, all of which switched to backup generators. Its Bellevue office was evacuated for inspection and customer service calls were rerouted to Verizon's office in Tempe, Ariz.

"You simply cannot build a network where you can have enough capacity that in a crisis, every call will go through the first time," said Lisa Bowersock, spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless. "But we build our networks to withstand a crisis. We are up and fully functional."

It will take weeks and perhaps months to clear all the rubble and repair all the cracks. But most important, all agree, is that everyone will be around to help.

Seismologists said the region's residents can thank the fact that this quake was caused by an oceanic plate being thrust deep beneath the continental plate on which we live.

"If you're going to have a magnitude-7 in the Puget Sound area," said Bill Steele, a UW seismologist, "let it be a deep one."