Seattlest Shares: How We're Preparing for an Earthquake

When the Seattlest staffers heard the news of the East Coast's earthquake, our first emotion was concern. But then, as soon as we heard that it was mostly all good over there, our next feeling was one of anxiety. Because, well, we know that we could be next.

How are we preparing for the Big One? Oh, about how you'd imagine:

• When I lived in Pioneer Square, in my sheisty, broke-down loft, sleeping on what is basically a shelf built without the pesky constraints of building code standards, I would get myself to sleep at night picturing what would happen when I got washed into the sound.

  Most likely I would be killed when the seawall collapsed and my entire building came crashing down, but part of me thought that this mostly-improbable situation would happen, and I would convince myself that this would be the case: that little shelf I sleep on would be miraculously unscathed, but come loose and float on top of the sound after the earthquake was done, and somehow continue to survive aftershocks and any tsunami activity.

  I would survive on my little shelf, like it was Waterworld, until everything got a little less crazy ashore and I could be rescued (like that little dog in Japan). Then I could publish my memoirs about my three days living in Waterworld.

  Mostly, though, I dealt with the impending Big One by moving out of Pioneer Square.



• Being mere feet away from the regional trauma hospital means my neighborhood will instantly be inundated by people with smashed legs and bloody heads and dead children. Ambulances will be everywhere, injured people laying in the streets and I will have to fend them off from looting my clean drinking water, canned goods and ample weed stash. I'm thinking pointy sticks should do the trick.

  For my own personal preparedness I keep a bottle of bourbon in the house at all times, can usually rustle up some band-aids and am more than ready to drink my cat's water if it comes to that.



• I plan on doing what they taught me in school: duck and cover or stand in a doorway (But don't accidentally put your fingers where the door hinges! If earthquake preparedness videos from my Bay Area public school days have taught me anything it's that the door will most definitely slam shut and it will hurt a lot when it shuts on your fingers thus breaking them.)


• I'll just be checking Twitter a lot.


• I was -ahem- using the facilities when the last big one hit here a few years back. I vowed never to be caught sitting down again. It was quite tramatic as the stalls were of the thin metal variety and were waving like paper in the wind. By the time I could stumble out into the office, everyone was outside. So much for not leaving anyone behind. Or, maybe they were just saving me the embarrassment (pun? sure, why not.) and figuring I'd rather die in the restroom rubble than have someone come looking for me.


• Beans. Cans and cans of beans.


• I learned disaster preparedness from the films of Roland Emmerich: There's nothing that's so life threatening that you couldn't actually out-run it.