Quaking in Place

Quaking in Place

By Charles E. Kraus

Seattle ---   I moved to the west coast just about 45 years ago.   When I think of New York, I envision the city as it existed in 1970.  In those days, if you wanted to encourage someone to talk about themselves, you said, “what’s shaking?”

Recently, The New Yorker Magazine, of all publications, told us what’s shaking here in Seattle.   According to Kathryn Shultz’s article, The Really Big One, what’s shaking, or will be soon, is a long stretch of California, Oregon and Washington coast, the Cascadia subduction zone.  She singles out Portland and Seattle for special deconstructability.

Shultz’s piece cannot be dismissed as sensationalism.  It is published in a magazine that fact checks and verifies everything from commas to continental drift.  It is not only a respected magazine, it is evidently a very well read one.  More than a dozen people, folks I met in Seattle, Portland, LA, people I spoke with from New York, Baltimore and Texas, have brought up the quake story.  Some ask, ‘so, what are you going to do?’  It’s a reasonable question, but not an easy one to answer.

Obviously, individual responses to news that staying put just might be lethal, is going to vary depending upon a person’s situation.  Single, married, employed, home owner, parent, elderly.  Part of a community, someone who’s spent a lifetime perfecting a house, a business, a reputation.  If I were 25, just getting a foothold on my future, I’d move that future to higher less potentially unstable ground.  Such a decision would be prudent.  At that age, you have less stuff, fewer commitments, and a belief in nice long tomorrows.

My wife and I are 70, or close to it.  Our home is literally on a hill.   It is unlikely that a tsunami will wreak havoc on the property.  It’s a wood frame house, well anchored, and though it might just ride out a 9+  Big One, we’d have to be home to benefit from any potential protection.  Not downtown.  Not by the harbor, not visiting in Portland, shopping in Edmonds.  Not frequenting any of the places that comprise our Seattle lives.   Now that I think about it, we are pretty close to Lake Washington, a mighty body of water.  Will it jump the shoreline?  And what would that look like?  Maybe we shouldn’t picnic down by the lake.

Evidently, many of the facts that Shultz reports are not newly minted.  Though I’d never read ­about subduction zones, seismologists are familiar with the concept, and with Pacific Northwest’s unstable situation.  OK, so why did it take a New Yorker article to bring the topic to the local dinner table discussion circuit?

Realtors tell you property value is all about location.  Evidently, so do seismologists.  It turns out that when you are trying to decide if you should move because the kids are about to enter school and you want to find a “good” school district, you need to think about more than test scores.   Have you ever even discussed earthquakes with your kids?

Years ago, when Boeing found itself in bad times, people left this city without saying goodbye.  Houses were abandoned, personal property stacked at the curb.  Leaving is an option.  It’s been done.  I suppose the question becomes, is staying an option?  And if we stick around, are we merely waiting for the inevitable?  Wondering if tonight, or next month, or perhaps not for a hundred years, this place is going to experience a massive adjustment.

Do we turn our backs on reality, just go on living our lives, heads in the sand, magical thinking a group process.  Or will our city and state governments declare a state of potential emergency, install the early warning systems, move schools to higher ground, keep the conversation going.  Will the public, you and I, treat the situation as anything more than a passing headline?   What’s shaking?