Wolfepack, please don't take this as a rotten tomato, but given where you are working I want to emphasize one thing that should be a bigger part of your preparations: you will likely be dead or injured, and less likely to emerge from a typical Seattle quake unharmed and be able to walk home. Sure, if another Nisqually quake strikes 40 miles from us, everything will shake, but also the transportation system will remain intact, so the long walk home should remain academic. And truth be told, many Seattle Earthquakes (TM) resemble the Nisqually - disruptive more than destructive. When we have the serious earthquake we're capable of though, all hell breaks loose, and the rules of architecture are suddenly writ large on the landscape, in new and graphic detail. A building that is estimated to 'lose its outer walls but have its floors remain standing'? On Western Avenue, adjacent to the Alaskan Way Viaduct? Really?? I would be skeptical of that, and fwiw would investigate your building architecture more closely. You may be in an unreinforced masonry building, or it may have received a retrofit, which is good, but recent studies have called into question the adequacy of retrofitted URM structures. After all, your first step is to survive the quake, and get out the door, then down the street, past every other building in your vicinity. That's suddenly a bigger problem than you imagined if you are crushed beneath flood slabs. Your GHB with you. Whoever finds it will likely toss the dross and focus on whatever water, food and first aid survives.
I guess I am not quite sure what you are recommending I do in place of or in addition to my get home plan. While there is probably a 75% chance I won't even survive a major quake, or maybe a 90% chance that even if I do survive I will be to injured to go anywhere, I'm not just going to say the odds are bad, I'll do nothing. (those percentages have no basis in fact, but are what I mentally picture). I can't do anything about improving the survivability of the building, nor do I have much say in where I am located within the building. The best I can do is try to be aware of the building and have some idea of where major supports and exits are. I was not thinking of EQ dangers when I took this job, though it will probably be a factor in future jobs. Leaving this job for one better located is probably not a real option at this time. Heck, I feel lucky to have a job at all in the current economic climate. I can see that laying in additional preps to deal with traumatic injury would be good. However, if I am the one with the traumatic injuries, then all else is probably for naught. I am certainly not so far detached from reality that I think I can still make it home if my legs have been crushed. If I am badly injured, then I am going to do what I can for myself and then try to survive long enough for some sort of help to find me. I imagine if my injuries are really serious, I will die waiting the 3+ days it might take for somebody to get to me, but I'm not just going to give up.
Thanks for all the links. I do like having information. Will look through all of it when I get the chance.
Quibbling over Datrex or choice of TP on long walks home becomes an interesting intellectual exercise when you work in an old masonry building down on Western Avenue. Your neighborhood will resemble a war zone more than the peaceful waterfront place it is today. Again, if you survive intact the collapsing structures, liquefaction, fires, and a potential tsunami or seiche along the waterfront from the shaking, getting home to Lynnwood will be the least of your worries. If I were you, I would prepare more for personal injury and injuries of those working down the hallway from you, and the distinct possibility that you won't be moving more than a half mile from your work location until someone comes along to evacuate you. You may think and prepare as if you will walk away from your scenario unscratched, but what if you don't? Your architecture tends to dictate this more than your willing it to happen. Bandaids are cold comfort for broken bones and crush injuries. Think kerlix, and splinting material, and knowing how to use them.
Your point about having more trauma supplies and knowing how to use them are good ones and will beef up my work kit in that area.
Also one more thing on shelters - no one is going to 'send you to a shelter'. You will be fortunate if there is a shelter that you can enter Wolfepack. If its cold and rainy, as it often is in Seattle, you would be fortunate to get in the door, there will be so many who want in. And the folks who run it will treat you with the respect and dignity you offer and that you deserve, although those like adequate post-EQ supplies will be in short supply. I don't pretend to know what you imagine goes on inside a shelter, but its food, water and warmth, which can be in very short supply otherwise. If you choose your tarp and your ground insulation exposed outdoors thats fine, you'll have plenty of company, in those first 48-72 hours they'll be using cardboard and blankets and mattresses and whatever else they can pull from the rubble to make do. Stay safe. Be realistic.
My images of shelters are probably entirely incorrect and are mostly based on media coverage of the Superdome after hurricane Katrina. Most people I talked to have all said they would rather be on their own then endure that. Beyond that probably hugely incorrect image, I have no idea what a shelter might actually be like. In the case of a large-scale emergency like a big earthquake that may displace tens of thousands of people, I can't imagine anyplace much beyond a big stadium where authorities could put that number of people. As I said though, I have no real facts to work on when it comes to large-scale shelters.
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