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CWAers Respond After Washington Quake
For the first few seconds, they thought it was an airplane overhead, or someone moving furniture upstairs. Drivers wondered what was wrong with their cars. Some of the Qwest technicians on their way to service calls thought kids were jumping up and down on their trucks’ bumpers.
By the time the rattling, rumbling and rolling was over 40 seconds later, CWA members and staff in western Washington realized they’d just lived through an earthquake.
“I was ready to send an e-mail and suddenly the room started to rumble, like someone was working on the roof,” Jay Lute, secretary in the District 7 office, said, “then everything just started shaking like crazy. Then the power went out.”
Lute wasn’t hurt and the office suffered no damage. She got home to find an overturned bookcase, a tipped computer monitor and a hissing cat hiding in her closet, but no serious problems.
Other staff and members in Seattle, Renton, Olympia and Tacoma had similar accounts of the Feb. 28 earthquake, thankful they had amusing and not tragic stories to share.
The 6.8 magnitude quake, which struck at 10:54 a.m., originated 33 miles below the earth near Olympia, the state capitol. In addition to power failures, the quake caused random phone outages, requiring some Qwest technicians to put in long hours for several days making repairs.
Brenda Roberts, vice president of CWA Local 7800 in Seattle, said a retiring Qwest vice president came to a Local 7800 membership meeting two weeks later and thanked everyone. “He commented on how proud he was of everybody in the aftermath of the earthquake,” she said. “He praised everyone for staying calm and working through lunches and late all week to make sure service was restored.”
In Tacoma, situated between Seattle and Olympia, there were no significant problems affecting phone workers except for a landslide in the Salmon Beach neighborhood on Puget Sound. Randy Grams, a Qwest technician and secretary-treasurer for CWA Local 7804, said as of mid-March, the area remained too unstable to allow workers to make repairs.
“Our local’s safety officer, vice president Dennis Garrett, has been very diligent about making sure that we don’t go into the area until there’s a geologist’s report saying it’s safe,” Grams said.
In Olympia, most of the telephone damage occurred when water pipes burst and flooded buildings, including the AFL-CIO’s offices, Local 7810 President Bill Jenkins said. “We didn’t have any lines go down,” Jenkins said. “The poles swayed pretty good, but they didn’t come down.”
Jenkins and others said the main telephone problem was immediately after the earthquake when people were jamming landlines and cellular phones trying to make sure family and friends were OK. “For three or four hours, we couldn’t get a dial tone,” he said.
Many employers sent workers home after the earthquake, or allowed them to leave without penalty to check on their families and homes. But workers in an Olympia office who sell yellow pages advertising by phone for Qwest Dex were pressured to stay. Those who did leave were later told they’d be docked vacation time.
The edict came from a Qwest official in Portland, Ore., three hours south of the quake’s epicenter. It took two phone calls, but Sage Alixander, secretary of Local 7803, which represents all Dex workers in western Washington, got the woman to relent.
“I told her a state of emergency had been declared. The governor of Washington and the spokesman for Qwest were telling people to stay off the phones,” Alixander said. “I asked her how it would look if the public learned that Qwest was ordering its people to stay on the phones selling advertising in the middle of an emergency. Not to mention the fact that people were concerned about their kids and homes and pets.”
As for Alixander, she was in her Qwest Dex office in Bellevue on the top floor of a five-story building when she thought she heard the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels roar past. The flying team performs every August over Lake Washington in Seattle, and frequently zooms past Alixander’s windows 10 miles east.
“I thought, ‘It’s not August.’ What are the Blue Angels flying for?" she said. “Then the building started shaking above me and the next thing I knew, it was rocking and rolling. A couple of us were yelling, ‘Under your desk! Under your desk!’ It felt like you were surfing. I literally had to bend my knees and go with the ride.”
By the time the rattling, rumbling and rolling was over 40 seconds later, CWA members and staff in western Washington realized they’d just lived through an earthquake.
“I was ready to send an e-mail and suddenly the room started to rumble, like someone was working on the roof,” Jay Lute, secretary in the District 7 office, said, “then everything just started shaking like crazy. Then the power went out.”
Lute wasn’t hurt and the office suffered no damage. She got home to find an overturned bookcase, a tipped computer monitor and a hissing cat hiding in her closet, but no serious problems.
Other staff and members in Seattle, Renton, Olympia and Tacoma had similar accounts of the Feb. 28 earthquake, thankful they had amusing and not tragic stories to share.
The 6.8 magnitude quake, which struck at 10:54 a.m., originated 33 miles below the earth near Olympia, the state capitol. In addition to power failures, the quake caused random phone outages, requiring some Qwest technicians to put in long hours for several days making repairs.
Brenda Roberts, vice president of CWA Local 7800 in Seattle, said a retiring Qwest vice president came to a Local 7800 membership meeting two weeks later and thanked everyone. “He commented on how proud he was of everybody in the aftermath of the earthquake,” she said. “He praised everyone for staying calm and working through lunches and late all week to make sure service was restored.”
In Tacoma, situated between Seattle and Olympia, there were no significant problems affecting phone workers except for a landslide in the Salmon Beach neighborhood on Puget Sound. Randy Grams, a Qwest technician and secretary-treasurer for CWA Local 7804, said as of mid-March, the area remained too unstable to allow workers to make repairs.
“Our local’s safety officer, vice president Dennis Garrett, has been very diligent about making sure that we don’t go into the area until there’s a geologist’s report saying it’s safe,” Grams said.
In Olympia, most of the telephone damage occurred when water pipes burst and flooded buildings, including the AFL-CIO’s offices, Local 7810 President Bill Jenkins said. “We didn’t have any lines go down,” Jenkins said. “The poles swayed pretty good, but they didn’t come down.”
Jenkins and others said the main telephone problem was immediately after the earthquake when people were jamming landlines and cellular phones trying to make sure family and friends were OK. “For three or four hours, we couldn’t get a dial tone,” he said.
Many employers sent workers home after the earthquake, or allowed them to leave without penalty to check on their families and homes. But workers in an Olympia office who sell yellow pages advertising by phone for Qwest Dex were pressured to stay. Those who did leave were later told they’d be docked vacation time.
The edict came from a Qwest official in Portland, Ore., three hours south of the quake’s epicenter. It took two phone calls, but Sage Alixander, secretary of Local 7803, which represents all Dex workers in western Washington, got the woman to relent.
“I told her a state of emergency had been declared. The governor of Washington and the spokesman for Qwest were telling people to stay off the phones,” Alixander said. “I asked her how it would look if the public learned that Qwest was ordering its people to stay on the phones selling advertising in the middle of an emergency. Not to mention the fact that people were concerned about their kids and homes and pets.”
As for Alixander, she was in her Qwest Dex office in Bellevue on the top floor of a five-story building when she thought she heard the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels roar past. The flying team performs every August over Lake Washington in Seattle, and frequently zooms past Alixander’s windows 10 miles east.
“I thought, ‘It’s not August.’ What are the Blue Angels flying for?" she said. “Then the building started shaking above me and the next thing I knew, it was rocking and rolling. A couple of us were yelling, ‘Under your desk! Under your desk!’ It felt like you were surfing. I literally had to bend my knees and go with the ride.”