The Seattle quake of 2/28/01 -

At our house on Holly Terrace I rate this as a 4.5 quake. 
Stimulating, but almost no damage. 

One little Oaxacan ceramic angel fell over and lost her 
wing, now glued back on.  There are many other tchatchkas 
in the house and no other breakage. 

I was in my basement office, watching and listening to the 
floor above me dance north and south a bit. This house is 
pretty solid, I think. At the sharpest bump I did dive under 
the desk just to be prudent, but nothing was coming down. 
The only thing above me that could have descended in a quake 
would have been the entire house. The desk would not have 
been much help in that case. 

In our neighbor's house across the street, there were piles
of broken porcelain antiques on the floor, kitchen drawers
slid open, etc.

Another neighbor was in the bathtub, which got interesting.
That was his first quake experience.  

A third neighbor was driving home on I-5, headed north 
(along the axis of motion). He thought he had a flat tire, 
pulled over, and noticed 10 other drivers pulled over, 
checking their tires. So he realized it was a quake.

Although I noticed the lights blinking a bit, the computers
stayed running. My smsys.com site is right here in the
basement now.  So if you ever want to check to see if
all is well, you can just try the web page.
  http://www.smsys.com/
If you get the page, the house is still standing.

The key information that gets lost in all the hype is that 
the epicenter was 33 miles deep!  The space station is 173 
nautical miles up, just for comparison. Also it was centered 
under Anderson Island, roughly, off the coast of Steilacoom, 
10 miles north of Olympia (the state capitol) and 35 miles 
SSW of Seattle. Get out your pencil and you can figure the 
real, hypotenuse, distance to Seattle.
  sqrt of (35x35)+(33x33) = 48 miles away.
So even though the quake was measured, from various remote 
stations, as a 6.8 at its epicenter, Seattle was only hit 
in the 4 to 6 range on the Richter Scale, depending on the 
phase congruence of the various waves in various locations 
and times.  

My friend on the 58th floor of the Key Tower wrote:

> It started rolling and then it felt like we were hopping 
> up and down.  The rolling is OK with me in this well-designed 
> structure, but the vertical bumps were not amusing.  We lost 
> some ceiling tiles and a glass framed picture fell off the wall.  
> More than a few frayed nerves.
>
> I sent you a video: 
>
> http://www.secureeye.com   
> click on "Click to Enter"    
> click on "Try It!"
> click on "Guest Login"  
> click on "Go to Camera List View"  
> now click "Engineering Wing TPZ"  
> you will see a VCR tape icon next to that - click it.
> In the time selection - change it to 10:54 and 
> hit the "Jump to SECLIP" to the right of the time.  
> You will be able to see people outside of my office
> during the quake.

The above only works with MSIE (not Netscape). Try also the 
West Camera at the same time or a minute earlier. It is aimed 
at the ferry dock.

For a 6.8 quake, this was pretty mellow, but that's how they 
do things here. No "edge" here, as "BabaRay" noted. :o) 
Yeah, OK, $2 Billion in damage estimated, but it was nothing 
like Loma Prieta, which was only a 7.1. 

It's said to be the Juan de Fuca plate diving under us. 
How that easterly motion gets turned into a north-south 
shuffle at the surface, I don't know. 

So that's my account of it. 

Rhodes Hileman
Seward Park
Seattle