Waiting for the Big One

I don’t think many people are aware of this, but any building that is more than 75 feet high is required to have a Floor Warden program in place. This is because fire engine ladders cannot reach any higher than this, requiring a backup plan in case of emergency. And I am the official Floor Warden for my floor in the WaMu Tower.

Basically, a Floor Warden is responsible for taking specific actions if a natural or man-made disaster occurs. This could include but is not limited to: fire, earthquake, power outage, bomb threat/suspicious package/substance, medical emergency, etc.

Yesterday I attended our building’s annual safety training session, and basically succeeded in completely freaking myself out. One of the first things the Seattle firefighter conducting the class explained to us is that our city lies directly in the Ring of Fire. I had never heard this terminology before, but apparently it’s an area of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions encircling the basin of the Pacific Ocean, associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements.

To sum up, we are sitting ducks should some sort of natural disaster occur, and apparently we are due for one any day now, so the entire focus of the class was getting ready for it. And now that I’ve gone through the Floor Warden training program all I can think about is when “the big one” will hit. I'm totally freaked out, and it seems with good reason!

I just found out that a shallow earthquake centered 14 miles north of Seattle shook some people awake at 5:25 a.m. this morning. It measured 4.6 on the scale, luckily too small to cause any damage.

Ironic?