By Jim Brown
March 1, 2001

(AgapePress) - A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 shook Seattle and western Washington state for 45 seconds yesterday.

Various sources say the jolt caused at least $1 billion in damage, and sent thousands of people fleeing homes, schools, and office buildings.

Miraculously, there was only one report of a fatality; however, 250 injuries are directly linked to the quake. A 66-year old woman from Burien, a Seattle suburb near the airport, died of a heart attack following the earthquake.

The quake was centered about 35 miles southwest of Seattle and was felt as far away as Utah, southern Oregon and Canada.

The temblor trapped people at the top of Seattle’s landmark World’s Fair Space Needle, cracked the famous Boeing Field where the aerospace giant tests its planes, and cut power to 200,000 people in the western part of the state.

According to Governor Gary Locke, who declared a state of emergency for western Washington, “We’re just really, really lucky.”

Today, two mild aftershocks with magnitudes of 3.4 and 2.7 respectively, occurred five hours apart. Both the Thursday morning an Wednesday morning quakes were centered at least 30 miles beneath the Earth's surface -- a depth that seismologists said softened the blow of yesterday’s major quake.

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