The morning of February 28, 2001, started like any other morning at the Emerald Inn. I was in the office going through the records from the previous day's business. My son, who was at that time living with his wife in NYC was visiting me in Seattle was staying in a room right above the office. I don't know for sure if I looked at the clock at that moment, but nevertheless, the moment is forever ingrained in my memory bank. I do have to admit that sometimes my memory bank gets a little overdrawn.
Try to imagine what the sound would be like if a an Amtrak train came through the wall in your living room and roared through the house, and you can get the idea of the unbelievable roar that sounded that morning at the hotel as Mother Nature unleashed her fury deep in the earth 30 miles south of Seattle. For 45 heart stopping seconds the earth shook, the building swayed, the parking lot looked like it was trying to relocate. I had been through two other shakes since I had moved back to Seattle, but this one was so different, so much more powerful, and one just knew that there had to be major damage, if not loss of life.
I turned on the television with a dreaded anticipation, fully expecting to see a scene out of a horror film. At first the news people were saying that it was a 7 on the Richter scale, and then it was downgraded to a 6.8, which is still a very major earthquake. 400 people were injured and damages of over 2 billion dollars.
I was thinking about that quake the other day, and that made me wonder about possible earthquakes in my hometown of Wallace. I knew that we had a couple of little shocks, and, of course, as we Wallace natives know, the Galena Mine could shake the Valley with those powerful rock blasts that it had from time to time.
I was very surprised to find out just how many earthquakes actually registered in Wallace each year. In 2013, there were 18 small quakes in the Wallace area, none registering more than a 2 on the Richter scale. In 2011 there were 2 quakes, with a high of a 3 on the scale, and in the nineties there were a couple of 4’s. However, the odds of a big one happening are only 16.01% within a 50 mile radius of Wallace. However, the earth does rumble and roar, and with all the quakes in Oklahoma, and the Pacific the past month, one never knows. Shake, Rattle and Roll.
2 comments:
Cedar: The one's I remember feeling were huge rock blasts. Luckily back in the day when I was a hard rock gypo miner, I did not get caught in one while underground. I have friends who did.
GF, I remember as a kid that the Galena blasts would shake our house in Cedar Street. Glad you were never caught in one. I was always told that the Galena was the most dangerous mine in the area. I was at the Star for a year, but we did not have those blasts like you did.
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