Seattle Times Preempts Blame Game In Seattle Disaster

Daily papers like the Seattle Times have the jump on local and national publications scrambling to release disaster preparedness material as soon as possible. At the Seattle Times there's no need to scrap the thrice-annual real estate issue in lieu of reminding the readership of the region's pending apocalypse when you can just toss it in any old Monday edition, though. The headline reads "Who'll be to blame if viaduct, 520 bridge collapse?" and the answer, they would have you believe, is most definitely not the Seattle Times.

As was the case with the levees in New Orleans, the dangers of the viaduct and floating bridge are well-known. And like New Orleans, if an earthquake strikes before Seattle's most perilous bridges are replaced, we'll be looking for someone to blame.

The article goes on to talk a lot about things that we already know. The viaduct and the floating bridges are waiting tragedies, yes, and when they fail and hundreds of people die we will become unwilling participants in the Blame Game, yes. When that happens a finger will eventually get pointed at the Seattle Times itself, which still has a lot of work to do if it's trying to position itself as the Times-Picayune of the Big One here. The Stranger today pointed out that this acticle does not draw a direct link from the post quake blame to I-912, and they're right.

There is mention of the ballot initiative to defund repairs, improvements and replacements to our dangerous transportation infrastructure by way of repealing the gas tax, but the article stops short of spelling it out. New Orleans is devasted in part because they recognized a potential hazard and refused to put up the funds to address it, which is exactly what Seattle will be doing by rolling back the gas tax. Which is exactly what the Seattle Times needs to say in this acticle, but isn't.