Earthquake shakes Puget Sound businesses
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - by Business Journal Staff
It was anything but business as usual in the Puget Sound region after a sizable earthquake struck at about 11 a.m. local time Wednesday. The quake was about 30 miles below the surface, centered south of Seattle.
The temblor, measured preliminarily at about 6.5 on the Richter scale, did no catastrophic damage, and only about a dozen injuries have been reported. But work at many businesses ground to a halt as workers took to the streets to escape skyscrapers, survey damage and share stories. Many government offices closed, and Sea-Tac International Airport was still closed several hours after the quake. Sales calls were impossible as cellular and land-based telephone lines were flooded. Several companies gave up and closed for the day, their employees clogging traffic for miles around Seattle.
The Boeing Co., one of the area's largest employers, sent home nearly all of its Seattle-area employees shortly after the earthquake hit, and canceled second and third shifts at its aircraft assembly plants in Everett and Renton.
"Everything has been relatively minor, but we're checking the entire site," said Boeing spokesman Russ Young about the Everett plant.
While damage to its facilities was light the company now has to make sure it can put together aircraft properly when work resumes.
"Part of our procedure after an earthquake is to have engineers go through and check all of the alignments and balance of the tools, to make sure they're to the required precision tolerances," said spokesman Dean Tougas.
On Wednesday afternoon, about two hours after the earthquake, Boeing engineers weren't yet certain if or how much any alignments had been compromised.
"It's our hope we can get this done before the first shift tomorrow," Tougas said.
Other businesses are surveying the damage at their facilities as well.
Seattle Center spokesman Perry Cooper said events scheduled at Key Arena and The Seattle Repertory Theatre for Wednesday night were canceled, even though little damage was apparent at the Seattle Center.
Richmond Public Relations sent its workers home after the quake, said Lorne Richmond, senior vice president. Richmond's Fourth Avenue building developed cracks during the quake, he said.
"A couple of (computer) monitors came down off people's desks," he added.
Kate Elliott, owner of the Elliott Brown Gallery on Westlake Avenue, said three works of art were destroyed in the quake.
The quake did more damage to buildings in some areas than in others.
In the central business district, sidewalks were covered with glass and many buildings were closed as inspectors searched for damage.
The effects were particularly apparent in the Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood, populated by aged brick buildings, and farther south in the Sodo industrial area.
Heavily damaged structures included the Cadillac Building, at the northwest corner of South Jackson Street and Second Avenue South in Pioneer Square, which houses businesses including the Fenix Underground retail complex and nightclub. A massive chunk of the building's upper facade fell to the street, leaving bricks and rubble on cars and the surrounding sidewalk.
On a nearby street, the hands of the venerable Earl D. Layman street clock outside the Elliott Bay Book Co. were frozen at 10:54 a.m., the approximate time of the earthquake.
In the Sodo district, the earthquake inflicted severe damage to a number of buildings, including the Sodo Center complex at Utah Avenue South and South Lander Street, the headquarters of Starbucks Coffee Co. The building was evacuated and firefighters searched for people possibly left inside.
As of 1 p.m., Unico Properties Inc. said it had yet to discover any major structural damage to the office buildings on Seattle's Metropolitan Tract, a 10-acre piece of land at the heart of the central business district owned by the University of Washington and managed by Unico. Teams from the company were conducting floor-by-floor inspections.
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