Twenty years after the Nisqually earthquake, seismic upgrades still needed across Cascadia

Two decades ago, as morn­ing drew to a close around Puget Sound, the ground sud­den­ly began to shake. It would go on shak­ing for near­ly a minute, in what would become known as the Nisqually earth­quake… a 6.8 mag­ni­tude tem­blor that caused bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age and cat­alyzed long over­due con­ver­sa­tions about seis­mi­cal­ly retro­fitting Cas­ca­di­a’s vul­ner­a­ble, aging infrastructure.

With twen­ty years hav­ing passed, it seems like a good time to take stock of how far we’ve come towards being ready for the next geo­log­ic haz­ard, whether it be anoth­er inter­slab earth­quake, or the even more wor­ry­ing Big One (a rup­ture of the Cas­ca­dia Sub­duc­tion Zone), or a vol­canic erup­tion and ensu­ing lahar, or a tsuna­mi caused by an earth­quake in anoth­er part of the world.

KING5 has admirably been engaged in such an exer­cise for prac­ti­cal­ly a week now, and The Seat­tle Times joined the par­ty today with a lengthy and excel­lent front page arti­cle in its Sun­day edi­tion by reporter San­di Doughton.

This post rep­re­sents NPI’s con­tri­bu­tion to the con­ver­sa­tion — at least at this junc­ture. As impor­tant as it is to mark this occa­sion, it’s even more impor­tant that we keep the con­ver­sa­tion going so we can cre­ate an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to secur­ing the invest­ments we need to pro­tect Cas­ca­dia from future geo­log­ic haz­ards. Because they are com­ing. It’s only a mat­ter of time.

In fact, we are on bor­rowed time. We’re over­due for an earth­quake much worse than what we expe­ri­enced twen­ty years ago on that last day of Feb­ru­ary. It could strike at any moment, with almost no warn­ing or time to prepare.

There is no ques­tion we’ve made some progress since the Nisqually quake trau­mat­i­cal­ly remind­ed us that we live in a region that belongs to the Pacif­ic Ring of Fire. Yet there is also a lot that remains to be done.

The win column

On the pos­i­tive side of the ledger are a slew of projects that have retro­fit­ted or removed unsafe build­ings and facil­i­ties that could have come down in a quake.

For exam­ple:

• On the megapro­ject front, WSDOT suc­cess­ful­ly replaced both the Alaskan Way Viaduct and State Route 520’s Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge, both of which were old and crum­bling. The via­duc­t’s suc­ces­sor is a tun­nel run­ning under­neath First Avenue, which could be a vital means of mov­ing vehi­cles through the down­town core in the after­math of a dis­as­ter. 520, mean­while, has a a new float­ing bridge designed to resist disasters.
• The State Capi­tol in Olympia was retro­fit­ted and seis­mi­cal­ly upgrad­ed to be more earth­quake resis­tant — work that tem­porar­i­ly dis­placed both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture. The project, which cost over $120 mil­lion, secured the build­ing’s his­toric and icon­ic dome to its sup­port­ing columns.
• When the quake hit, Seat­tle Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port was actu­al­ly in the mid­dle of a project to improve the safe­ty of the air­port com­plex. The quake bad­ly dam­aged the air traf­fic con­trol tow­er; a tem­po­rary one had be con­struct­ed. A new tow­er engi­neered to resist earth­quakes, unlike the one built in the 1950s, was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed and came online in 2004.

Work to replace Seat­tle’s vul­ner­a­ble sea­wall remains in progress, while WSDOT is rebuild­ing Col­man Dock, the state’s biggest fer­ry ter­mi­nal. The new Muk­il­teo Fer­ry Ter­mi­nal, which began oper­a­tions ear­li­er this win­ter, is anoth­er exam­ple of a win.

A long list of bridges and over­pass­es have been torn down and replaced, or sta­bi­lized — since 2001, like this bridge in the I‑90 cor­ri­dor.

In NPI’s home­town of Red­mond, a long list of school build­ings have been demol­ished and replaced with new cam­pus­es that are much more seis­mi­cal­ly safe since the turn of the cen­tu­ry, includ­ing Red­mond Mid­dle School, Red­mond High School, Horace Mann Ele­men­tary, Lake Wash­ing­ton High School, and Juani­ta High School. These projects were financed by vot­er-approved bonds.

The Lake Wash­ing­ton School Dis­trict, which has one of the most afflu­ent tax bases of any dis­trict in the state, was able to replace a large num­ber of schools in only a few years with pri­mar­i­ly local (as opposed to state) funding.

The still-to-do column

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, for every struc­ture that has been seis­mi­cal­ly mod­ern­ized, there are many more that have not. And dis­turbing­ly, sev­er­al of these struc­tures are ele­men­tary schools with unre­in­forced mason­ry in rur­al communities.

KING5’s Drew Mikkelsen has been to some of these schools.

So has Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Chris Reyk­dal. Reyk­dal wants state leg­is­la­tors to bud­get funds for fix­es to the fol­low­ing buildings:

• Burling­ton-Edi­son School Dis­trict 100, Burling­ton-Edi­son High School, Gym­na­si­um-Field­house Building
• Cen­tralia School Dis­trict 401, Wash­ing­ton Ele­men­tary School, Main Building
• Clover Park School Dis­trict, Custer Ele­men­tary, Class­room Building
• Fed­er­al Way Pub­lic Schools, Camelot Ele­men­tary School, Main Building
• Hoquiam School Dis­trict #28, Cen­tral Ele­men­tary School, Main Building
• Mary M. Knight School Dis­trict 311, Mary M. Knight School, Ele­men­tary School Building
• Marysville School Dis­trict 25, Marysville-Pilchuck High School, Library Build­ing (Build­ing J)
• Mor­ton School Dis­trict, Mor­ton Ele­men­tary School, Main Building
• Napavine School Dis­trict, Napavine Jr/Sr High School, Annex Building
• Ocean Beach School Dis­trict, Ilwa­co High School, Main Building
• Port Townsend School Dis­trict, Port Townsend High School, Gym Building
• Port Townsend School Dis­trict, Port Townsend High School, Math-Sci­ence Annex
• Quilcene School Dis­trict #48, Quilcene K‑12 School, Mid­dle School Building
• Quilcene School Dis­trict #48, Quilcene K‑12 School, High School Building
• South Bend Pub­lic Schools, South Bend Jr/Sr High School, High School Main Building
• Taco­ma Pub­lic Schools, Taco­ma School of the Arts, Pacif­ic Avenue Building
• Wood­land Pub­lic Schools, Wood­land Mid­dle School, Gym Building

Reyk­dal is ask­ing for $50 mil­lion in fund­ing this year for school safe­ty mod­ern­iza­tion projects. The Leg­is­la­ture should bud­get more… much more.

We need­n’t stop with these sev­en­teen buildings.

We can do more in this bien­ni­um’s bud­get. And we should.

We need to stop act­ing like we have lots of time to deal with this threat. Because there’s a very good chance we’ll all be shook up again very soon.

As men­tioned, we’re oper­at­ing on bor­rowed time. Anoth­er quake could strike at any time, and it could be very dead­ly and destruc­tive if we don’t seis­mi­cal­ly retro­fit or replace our old build­ings and bridges.

Coastal com­mu­ni­ties face the added threat of tsunamis, while towns nes­tled in moun­tain val­leys or along drainage sys­tems face the added threat of lahars.

For years, NPI has lob­bied the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture for an increase in the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources’ bud­get to study and plan for geo­log­ic haz­ards. I’ve per­son­al­ly tes­ti­fied in front of the Sen­ate Ways & Means Com­mit­tee on this very top­ic more than once. How­ev­er, despite con­ced­ing that the risks from geo­log­ic haz­ards are grave, leg­is­la­tors have con­tin­ued to under-invest in DNR’s Earth Sci­ences divi­sion, declin­ing to grant DNR all the fund­ing it has asked for.

Every pen­ny of every sin­gle request that Com­mis­sion­er Hillary Franz made should have been appro­pri­at­ed in the last few ses­sions. Franz did­n’t pro­pose any­thing that was not one hun­dred per­cent wor­thy of being fund­ed. Her deci­sion pack­ages should have all made it into the bud­get. Every. Last. One. But they didn’t.

Bet­ter infor­ma­tion yields bet­ter deci­sions. We can’t under­take every sin­gle project that’s need­ed right away, or simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, so we need to pri­or­i­tize. It would be eas­i­er to pri­or­i­tize if we had more pub­licly employed geol­o­gists and more resources our pub­licly employed geol­o­gists could use for their essen­tial work.

For years, fed­er­al grants have kept many pub­lic geol­o­gy ini­tia­tives going. As impor­tant as fed­er­al fund­ing is, states also have an impor­tant role to play. State geol­o­gists and their teams are on the front lines of the effort in Cas­ca­dia to map and ana­lyze the part of the Earth­’s lithos­phere we’re all liv­ing on top of.

Appalling­ly, we’ve been going in the wrong direc­tion lately.

In Ore­gon, for instance, Gov­er­nor Kate Brown inex­plic­a­bly and inde­fen­si­bly pro­posed doing away with DOGAMI, Ore­gon’s geo­log­i­cal sur­vey, in her 2021 bud­get pro­pos­al. And that was after the State of Ore­gon had laid off vet­er­an per­son­nel like Yumei Wang due to pan­dem­ic bud­get cuts.

Thank­ful­ly, Brown’s office began back­ing down after a pub­lic out­cry and a tsuna­mi (pun intend­ed) of com­plaints from geol­o­gists, includ­ing this peti­tion.

But that debate nev­er should have tak­en place. What we ought to be talk­ing  about is expand­ing state lev­el fund­ing for geol­o­gy, so that we can offer the best and bright­est young minds study­ing the pro­fes­sion jobs in the pub­lic sec­tor doing the peo­ple’s work, rather than mega­cor­po­ra­tions in the fos­sil fuels indus­try, and keep our extreme­ly knowl­edge­able vet­er­an geol­o­gists on the job.

Cas­ca­dia is a high tech hub with many research-focused pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties. We have the means to be a world leader in geo­log­ic haz­ards research and a leader in seis­mic mod­ern­iza­tion projects that save com­mu­ni­ties from being buried by the col­lapse of unsafe infra­struc­ture in a nat­ur­al disaster.

Let’s seize that oppor­tu­ni­ty, and aggres­sive­ly use what­ev­er time we have left before the next event to improve our emer­gency readiness.