Alley in Seattle. You have to wonder what happens to this city when an earthquake hits. Photoshopped. Click to embiggen.
Alley in Seattle. You have to wonder what happens to this city when an earthquake hits. Photoshopped. Click to embiggen.
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As a non city dweller I don’t get it. What’s the significance of the photo?
>> # 32 philgar said, on August 21st, 2010 at 7:50 pm
>> As a non city dweller I don’t get it. What’s the significance of the photo?
It’s the bend and tilt in the walls but people are disputing whether it’s the photo or the walls.
I have a different perspective since I’ve been in a number of those buildings — it’s the crappy brick and mortar that will come apart in an earthquake.
Seriously, some of those buildings are almost like a stack of bricks with loose sand holding them together.
@31, what’s the point of digitally signing a picture? If it’s digital, it can be counterfeited way too easily.
@32, alleys are an iconic element of city life. They are usually ugly and dirty, but somehow fascinating at the same time. Many bad, good and memorable things have happened in such almost secret places. There is a certain feeling of leeway/tolerance in the fact that such public places exist in huge cities, yet are out of sight of pretty much anyone. It’s like the omniscient metropolis is telling you “come on, you can have some privacy in here.” It’s like they are made for that, for the better or for the worse.
@33, aren’t most constructions pretty weak in the US? I see people punch holes through walls with bare hands in American movies all the time. That is utterly impossible in my country. I’ve never seen a wall that wasn’t made of very solid brick and mortar, including internal walls (good against noise). Except in shanty towns, of course. I’ve been told by people in the construction business that most houses and buildings in America are indeed remarkably weaker (and cheaper). If that’s true, it’s no wonder hurricanes can raze American cities so easily.
# 15 Santa Maria:
“Seattle is not near or on any active faults… its not San Francisco.. why all the scare mongering? …”
Sorry, incorrect — the entire northern west coast of the U.S. sits where the Pacific plate and Juan de Fuca plate subduct under the North American plate, leading to all the earthquakes and volcanoes there. Subduction zone earthquakes are the most energetic ones known (e.g., 2004 Indian Ocean quake). It was while my wife and I were living in Eugene, Oregon that they started discovering the approximately-every-400-years BIG 8.0 – 9.x earthquakes there, most recent one on January 26, 1700. They know the date because the tsunami it caused hit Japan. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake
#15 Santa Maria said, “Seattle is not near or on any active faults… its not San Francisco.. why all the scare mongering?
Sure there might be a 2.1M quake every 100 years.. but that ain’t gonna shake anything.”
Are you kidding? I was in DuPont, Washington which is about 30 miles south of Seattle on the Pacific coast. There was a 6.8 Earthquake less than 2 miles from where I was. Here are some pictures of the damage the earthquake caused in Seattle: http://olywa.net/radu/valerie/022801quake.html Seattle was 30 miles further away and it still got damaged.