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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 24, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 27, 2025
Deadly, damaging 1965 quake reminds us: Should we run?
By Clay Eals
The boy was maybe 8. He resembled TV’s Beaver Cleaver, but his smirk was more Eddie Haskell.
Interviewed briefly on a downtown Seattle sidewalk by KOMO-TV reporter Howard Shuman on April 29, 1965, about that morning’s 6.5-magnitude earthquake, the boy said he had been “in my house,” which “started to rumble.”
What did he do? “Ran outside. What else?”
Lasting 45 seconds at 8:29 a.m., the quake, centered in Northeast Tacoma, shook residents and structures over an area of 190,000 square miles. Three died from falling debris and four others from heart attacks.
The temblor marked the memories of many Northwesterners still living today. With its 60th anniversary upon us, the boy’s cheeky response merits reflection.
Running outside may be a natural gut reaction. But it goes against longstanding advice, which is to stay inside, move away from objects that could fall and crouch under a table or near a wall.
The boy’s sentiment, of course, wasn’t unique. Shuman’s other unnamed interviewees provided chilling echoes.
A Queen Anne High School girl, queried downtown, described a scene of panic before classes were to begin: “At first we saw someone running down the hall. There was a lot of noise, and the building started moving and the floor shaking up and down, and everybody started running out.”
A middle-aged man who had been in an elevator in the Great Northern Building at Fourth and Union said, “The elevator wouldn’t work, I pushed all the buttons, and it was shaking, and I didn’t know what to do. Finally the door opened, I looked down, and it was still shaking, and I walked right out of the building.”
At Harbor Island’s Fisher Flour Mill, a wooden tank fell seven stories, brick walls broke away from the sixth floor and two died. A jittery young worker said, “I didn’t have any control over my legs, so I dove underneath a post until I quit, and I ran out, and I ran about a 5-second 100-yard dash in street shoes.”
Admonitions to the contrary abound for an in-the-moment response. So do longer-term tips, such as those provided by Seattle disaster-preparedness coach Alice Kuder. Her firm, Just in Case, outlines a comprehensive “Flee Bag” of key items needed when a quake knocks out basic services.
All of which is immediately relevant, as geologists repeatedly tell us the Big One is imminent. Not if but when, and it could happen tomorrow. Our region’s most recent major earthquakes warned us in 1949, 1965 and 2001. Logic points to getting educated and taking precautions.
Indeed, “What else?”
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Alice Kuder and especially Joe Wren, longtime KOMO-TV archivist, for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you also will find two videos, 5 additional photos and 15 historical pages from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, all of which were helpful in the preparation of this column.
I remember this quake. I was a student at Tillicum Jr. High in Bellevue. All the students were marched out to the football field and as we were walking out to the field we could see our gymnasium sink about 2-3 inches from the quake… unreal.
My dad worked for Pacific Northwest Bell and was doing some work at the top of the Space Needle when the quake hit. He recalled the entire structure swaying back and forth. He sprinted down the internal steps as fast as he could go, and I suppose he had to go back up to finish the job!
In your essay you have a 4-image screen grab cluster of people interviewed by KOMO-TV. The unidentified “middle-aged man” in the upper left quadrant is Stanley T. Thorson, who was at that time the Regional Passenger Traffic Manager of the Great Northern Railway. His interview in the YouTube video clip begins at about the 4:26 mark.
When the earthquake hit, I was attending the inaugural year of Syre Elementary School. The Richmond Beach school located a half dozen blocks south of Snohomish County was built over a swamp. I remember seeing waves moving across the blacktopped playground. Along with my classmates, we dove under our desks just like we practiced in preparation for when the nuclear bomb was going to descend on us.
Is it possible that the “then” picture was taken from in front of what is now The Police Museum at 317 3rd Ave S, looking north? To my eyes, that seems a better match. Would love a second opinion…