In the state where I live, even though we have some pretty good windstorms from time to time, we don't really have to worry all that much about storms of the magnitude of Katrina or Jenny. But this IS a seismically active area. The North American tectonic plate is slowly trying to mosey west, and just off the coast of Washington and Oregon is the Juan de Fuca plate, which is trying to slide under the North American plate and go east. This has been going on for thousands—hundreds of thousands—of years, and this is what raised the Cascade mountain range. Some of the peaks in the range are volcanoes. Mount Lassen in California, and Mounts Baker, Rainier, Adams, and St. Helens in Washington. Then there's Mt. Hood in Oregon, and, of course, Crater Lake.

The arrangement—and movements—of the these plates are a mirror image of the situation that caused the Fukushima quake in Japan. Other than St. Helens throwing a little party back in 1980 and the recent Nisqually quake in 2001 when I thought the whole apartment building I live in was going to wind up down the back of my neck, it's been relatively quiet around here.

But—the geologists tell us that the last major quake on the Juan de Fuca subduction zone was about 300 years ago, and it left a lot of geological evidence of the damage it, and the subsequent tsunami caused. Also, we are told that if Mount Rainier, a dormant volcano, but with currently active steam vents ever decides to decides to whoop it up, metropolitan areas like Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia will be in deep do-do!!

And the geologists tell us that we are due for another Big One any time now.

Now, the State of Washington was able to handle the damage, downed trees, power outages, broken plate-glass windows and such from the Thanksgiving Day storm (winds just a few miles per hour short of an official hurricane) a couple of decades ago, but a major earthquake or volcanic eruption—or both?

Somebody's gonna have to be there with a few band-aids or it's going to be kinda nasty around here. . . .

Romney wants to junk FEMA?

Even if he could walk on water, that's reason enough not to elect him!

Don Firth