A couple of other real world Seattle area disaster possibilities.

Windstorm.

Back in 2006 (I think) we had a heck of a windstorm. While it may not affect the downtown core as much, it wrecked havoc with the burbs, mostly tree-falls. It also closed the I520 bridge. I happened to be trying to get from the east side to downtown, and I got stuck for many hours as all sorts of roads were impassable. And all I was trying to do is turn around and return.

Even if the downtown core is OK, it still can cause you problems getting home since you leave in the burbs. In this case, the more wooded area you lived, the bigger the problem.

I learned a few things that day.

1) Due to road blockages, you will likely be traveling in areas you are not familiar with. You need maps. Mapping GPS is LOTS better.

And you'll probably have to detour and backtrack a fair amount.

2) Local radio stations are worthless. They did not broadcast any useful information about things I needed to know in my location. You want to know about road closures, bridge closures, problem areas, whatever. Very little of that on the main FM stations.

3) It doesn't take a lot to close down a metropolitan area.

Here are a couple of pictures I snapped from my cell as I drove along. Not very good and there were lots of worse places that I didn't get pictures of since I didn't want to hold things up by gawking. But gives you a bit of the flavor:



Ice/Snow storm.

I can't remember the year, but a while back we had a pretty good ice storm. People abandoned their cars on the freeway and everywhere else.

While there wasn't a lot of damage, basically all transportation in the area came to a halt.

I think my wife said it took her about 8 hours to get home, and she was one of the lucky ones (and she had 4WD and good tires AND chains if she needed them).

Basically, you aren't going anywhere if the streets are impassible. Even if your vehicle can go, it doesn't help you if the street if full of vehicles that can't.

I actually missed the worst of this in Seattle because I was flying in from CA. However, it caused me my own goofy situation because we were delayed by many hours getting out of CA, then we were backed up on the runway in Portland for about 8 hours, then when we finally left Portland, we circled Seattle for about 3 hours.

Then I needed to get home from the Airport in the ice storm. Lucky for me, it was so late that havoc on the roads had died down and it only took me a couple (three?) more hours to get home (I carry chains in my car as well).

These were pretty bad events, but I don't think they were nearly as bad as they could have been. And the windstorm didn't even have heavy rain.

-john