Yes, we (Pearch's and Goode's) are all ok here in the Puget
Sound! What a crazy day though. I was at work when it
happened and it was a very dramatic experience.
The building I was in was really swaying but fortunatley I
was on the ground floor.
There were several cracks throughout the building and some
of the file cabinets and moveable
cubicle walls shifted around alot.
We were told to go home after the quake, like everyone else
in the Puget Sound area, so
the traffic was pretty bad without any traffic lights.
There was a lot of damage
in the downtown area of Olympia including the Capitol
building, bridges and a lot
of older buildings. I also encountered some landslides that
were triggered by the
quake. There was also several road failures which I will
probably be attending to tomorrow at work.
I went and checked out right near where the epicenter was
and
there was a huge railroad bridge that was closed to railroad
traffic. Right next to it was a big landslide scar that did
not fail from this earthquake but I have reasons to believe
it was from the 1949 earthquake that was even larger and
within the same epicenter proximity. Overall, this was just
a wake up call, since the hypocenter was 30 miles deep. And
since it was so deep that there will probably be no
aftershocks. If it was a more shallow earthquake we would
have seen even more damage. I will not forget this
experience as long as I live.