"Boy, but did we shake! Some of us are pretending to be focused on work, but there's no doubt--we're all a little rattled. I mean after all, its the EARTH...and it was QUAKING!" -- LIG correspondent Maureen, via e-mail from Seattle.

Who pissed God off?

It’s kind of funny. If you happen to be a doomsday advocate, right now, that’s what you’re thinking.

After a week of unrest in downtown Seattle, where a handful of violent nights culminated in a riot of mammoth proportions in the lovely but watering-hole heavy Pioneer Square district, the city was already just a little bit shaken.

In Seattle, when bad things happen, everyone hears about it. It’s that kind of place. It’s not that big a town. It’s still a little naïve about the realities of life in many large United States cities. Lovably so.

So today, everyone was getting back to normal, one imagines bar owners sweeping the streets and boarding up windows, car owners filing reports with their insurance companies after seeing them trampled by armies of drunken fools in the Fat Tuesday unpleasantness.

Then, at morning’s end, an earthquake.

6.8.

Higher than Northridge in 1994, which drew the world’s attention for days, where dozens were killed, and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage were incurred. Seattle’s appears to be in the billions, but no one’s dead.

In Seattle, bricks rained down at a Microsoft conference where Bill Gates was speaking, on the day the Seattle Times published the monopolizing mammoth’s plans to expand his very large home on the shores of Lake Washington.

Starbucks headquarters crumbled – search parties were looking to see that all were present and accounted for.

Thousands of lattes spilled on coffee drinkers shoes.

More cars were trashed, this time, by falling debris.

Streets where rioters looted and smashed in a drunken frenzy just hours before, now strewn with the rubble of an earthquake.

Holy mother.

Then the amazement. For years people have been predicting crisis in buckets full at the first major quake. No one’s dead, as far as we know.

Chatted with a business associate who’s building suffered little more than shattered glass from picture frames. They went out for pizza and more than a few drinks, and decided to head home around two o’clock.

The Alaskan Way viaduct (think the elevated portions of the West Side Highway, as in, shaky) did not collapse, as critics predicted it would. Crowded with traffic, little happened. No buildings fell to the ground.

No tsunami. Rocks fell at Mt St Helens, but Rainier just blew off a little steam. For now. Scientists are already rushing to make people aware that this is only the beginning.

Who knows.

Maybe God isn’t pissed off at all. Maybe he loves Seattle just as much as I do.

Good to know.

Email: davidr@lifeingotham.com

Next Update: 8 March