State Jolted Top To Bottom

A second sharp earthquake in two days and the strongest in two years - this one registering a magnitude 5.1 - jolted the Puget Sound region yesterday, shaking homes and rattling nerves from Canada to Oregon.

Damage from the earthquake included a collapsed furniture store roof and ruptured gas and water mains in Aberdeen. Five people were treated at Grays Harbor Community Hospital there, about 20 miles west of the epicenter, but officials said none of the injuries was serious.

Two inmates tried to break out of the Aberdeen City Jail immediately after the quake but were stopped.

The quake began at 6:43 p.m. when two massive plates of the Earth slipped a few inches past each other along a fault line 25 miles underground, said Bob Norris, U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist at the University of Washington seismology lab. The quake was centered about five miles north of Satsop in Central Grays Harbor County. No aftershocks were reported.

Residents felt the quake for 10 to 15 seconds, but seismology equipment at the UW recorded 10 minutes of shaking.

Coming on the heels of two other quakes in the region, the earthquake prompted speculation about whether the series of incidents could mean a larger quake is imminent.

"We really can't tell," said Brian Lassige, a seismologist with the National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado. "It could be that it's releasing a lot of stress so that there won't be a big one, or that it's building up, or that it's just random."

The depth - not unusual in Washington - was why about vibrations were felt over a wide area. A 5.1 quake is considered a moderately powerful one, capable of mild to moderate damage. The most common damage in such a quake are pictures coming off walls, objects flying off the shelves and power failures, Norris said.

"We thought, `Oh boy, here's the big one,' " said John Brooks, 65, of Elma, about five miles from the epicenter. "It sounded like it was right under the house. It was almost like dynamite going off right outside your window."

From B.C. to Oregon

Vibrations were reportedly felt from Vancouver, B.C., through Western Washington, and south to Astoria, Ore., Norris said.

In Aberdeen, about 20 miles west of the epicenter, Grays Harbor Community Hospital reported five people with quake-related injuries.

A nursing supervisor there said the patients were a man who fell off the roof of his home, a woman who tripped on a curb, a woman who twisted a knee, a baby dropped by an adult, and a woman with anxiety-caused chest pains.

The roof collapsed at Moore's Furniture and Appliances in downtown Aberdeen, sending debris into the building and onto the sidewalk outside. Owner Jim Moore, 47, said he had just closed the store and was pulling away in his car when the quake hit.

"When I think about it," he said, "if I had only been just a couple of minutes later getting out of there . . .."

In Mason County, a 911 dispatcher said the only damage reported was cracked walls and merchandise knocked off a local Safeway store in the Shelton area.

The Aberdeen and Hoquiam areas had power outages, some broken water lines, and there was a small gas leak in the county seat of Montesano.

The county courthouse in Montesano suffered extensive damage to Superior Court chambers on the third floor, and the bell tower on the fourth floor had a supporting brick wall that was dislodged, said Rick Scott, undersheriff for the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office.

"Right now nothing so severe that there's a concern about evacuations," he said last night.

The Red Cross began opening a temporary shelter for people in older homes in the area in the event that they want to go elsewhere for the night, Scott said.

The biggest concerns were around the structural integrity of dams and the cooling towers at the old nuclear power plant at Satsop, which is shut down. The dams and cooling towers seem to be structurally intact, Scott said.

"I live in Elma, and I was home when it hit," Scott said. "East county (near Elma) seems to have less damage than the west side (near Aberdeen and Hoquiam)." Jail escape attempted

Two inmates who tried to break out of the Aberdeen jail ripped a metal piece off a door and used it to smash several windows, police Sgt. Tom Siress said. But before they could climb out, a clerk noticed them on a surveillance monitor and alerted officers.

Some of the older buildings downtown appeared to have cracked walls or foundations and would have to be inspected to see if they are safe to enter, Siress said.

"From what I've seen, we have considerable major cracks to several older brick buildings," he said.

In addition, he said, huge plate-glass windows shattered in some of the buildings."

"The owners are down there boarding them up," he said.

People in most of the downtown area smelled gas from the ruptured pipe before the line was shut off. When a major water line broke, it flooded a street.

In Olympia, two waterlines broke inside the state Department of Natural Resources building, but early reports indicated no other damage to state buildings, said Bob Wells, engineer for the General Administration Office.

Olympia police reported no injuries or significant damage beyond a couple minor gas leaks.

In Seattle, an employee at the Space Needle Restaurant said workers and customers felt the earthquake, but no damage was reported there.

"It wasn't enough to cause any real big concerns," said the employee, who asked not to be identified. "The structure absorbed things well."

US West Communications has not reported any phone problems.

At the Columbia Seafirst Center in downtown, people were fairly calm last night, said Beulah Klomegah, a customer service manager. No damage was reported there, either. Building rolled

"We just rolled a little bit," said Klomegah, who works on the 28th floor. "I was calm. I wasn't scared. It was over before we knew it was an actual earthquake."

Ten minutes after Olympia stopped shaking, the 5-ton bronze chandelier hanging in the Capitol rotunda was still swaying on its 105-foot chain.

Yesterday's quake might have caused more widespread damage if the epicenter was located closer to the surface, said Norris, the UW geophysicist. Typically, if the epicenter is deep, surface vibrations are usually mild and widespread, he said.

Series of quakes

A moderate magnitude 5.7 quake occurred yesterday morning and was centered in the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver Island, about 132 miles southwest of Port Hardy, the Geologic Survey of Canada reported.

And on Thursday, a quake measuring magnitude 3.0 was centered deep under Maury Island, about nine miles north of Tacoma, but it caused no damage. Two minor quakes shook Vancouver's southern suburbs in recent days, officials said.

Other recent quakes include a magnitude 4.9 quake in June 1997 near Bainbridge Island and one the following day, a 4.6, near Okanogan in Okanogan County. A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck in May 1996 near Duvall. Several smaller earthquakes - hardly noticeable - have occurred over the years, Norris said.

In January 1995, a 5.0 earthquake centered 11 miles below Vashon Island was felt from the Canadian border to Oregon and as far east as Yakima. A series of earthquakes struck in April 1990 near Deming in Whatcom County; the largest was a magnitude 5.1.

Norris said that although yesterday's quake could not have been predicted, it did not come as a surprise. He said that the area may have another 5.0 quake in the next week, but that would not mean there is a trend.

The two most recent quakes are related only to the extent that the Earth's crust under both cities is subject to the same kind of stress. They do not sit on the same fault line, he said.

"It basically means that we live in a seismically active area," Norris said. "This is the kind of thing we can expect from time to time."

Geophysicists at the UW have used data from global satellites to confirm that an offshore fault has enough potency to produce a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in the Puget Sound area.

Evidence such as fallen land and deposits from past tsunamis strongly suggest that a past mega-quake occurred in this area and that a damaging event is coming, experts say.

Norris said there was no worry of a tsunami in yesterday's earthquake. Tsunamis typically are generated in earthquakes that are magnitude 7.0 or higher, Norris said.

Taken by surprise

Residents near the epicenter said the tremor happened so fast that they hardly had time to react.

"At first, I didn't know what it was. It was a really loud noise," said Mary Harris of Elma in Grays Harbor. "Then it just got worse. The house just started swaying, and I looked up and my fans were swaying. My house felt like it was buckling. It was just very scary."

Harris said that it felt like the earthquake lasted several seconds and there was no damage to her home.

"I went in the kitchen, and I could hear my cups rattling in the cupboards," she said. "The oven was shaking. It felt like the house was just going to fall down."

After the earthquake stopped in Elma, Brooks and his wife, Shirley, tip-toed over broken trinkets that had fallen and got out of their rural home.

"The birds were still flying, but that's about it," Brooks said. "It was one of those things that it goes dead quiet. It just seems like everybody stops.

"Stuff was falling, stuff was breaking," Shirley Brooks said. "There was nothing you could do but just kind of ride it out."

The quake also sent a scare through the Bee Hive restaurant in Montesano, said manager Mark Simon.

"I was giving cash to a customer up front, and the floor started flexing under my feet," he said. "Right after that, it really rumbled. People all got down and some were screaming. Bottles were falling off the shelves. It seemed like it wasn't going to stop."

Simon, said he's heard there was structural damage to malls and businesses in Aberdeen, where a lot of stuff is built on fill.

Staff reporters Tamra Fitzpatrick, Jim Lynch and Julie Peterson contributed to this story.