It’s great to note that Vashon True Value’s online store has a special section for Emergency Preparedness! (Hopefully they will soon round this out to include all the items from VashonBePrepared’s disaster checklists.) Other local stores...

The region between Richmond and Charlottesville in Virginia received a 5.9 magnitude earthquake at 1:51 p.m. on Tuesday.

Colorado got a 5.3 quake near Trinidad just before Noon. The only larger quakes since 1882 were from human activity: explosives or drilling – pumping waste underground that apparently lubricated the fault line!

The USGS reports there was no correlation between the two quakes.

Social media (Twitter) carried many reports on these…

The Associated Press came to this week’s 5th Annual Hazus conference held at the federal building and wrote up a nice piece citing (yet again) that we are not ready for the huge quakes possible from any number of faults, but especially the Seattle and Cascadia faults:

   Of particular worry to government agencies - and emergency planners like Schelling - is the 680-mile long Cascadia fault line, which runs just 50 miles off Washington's shore. Scientists have found that a big 8.0 to 9.0 earthquake has hit that fault line about every 500 years. The last one struck in 1700.    According to a 2005 study that used Hazus data, such a strong earthquake would level parts of the region, bringing landslides,...

In case you are following the debate on auctioning off the “D” block – dearly desired by public safety officials for helping solve the interoperability issues so notable during the 9/11 attacks – check out this latest story by the National Journal which reports the legislation is definitely in play with the latest budget battles. (VashonBePrepared has not taken a stand on this issue, but knows many of you are tracking this issue!)

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