Yeah, well, doom and gloom. What are you gonna do? It seems to me that those kinds of programs try to paint the worst possible scenario. While there is a fair amount of risk due to long-term creativity exhibited by waterfront developers, I don't think that whole "mud flow" thing should be taken at face value.
Seattle is not the only city built on fill, and much of this region sits high on granite.
I saw there was another big quake off the N CA coast last night. I didn't see a tsunami warning from Mexico to Alaska this time, though.
Seattle is really not at risk from Mt. Rainier, although the Orting valley could be buried by a mud flow sometime in the next 500 years or so. Or not. I have a friend that lives in Port Orchard (on the other side of Puget Sound) and spends a fortune to commute, primarily due to that prospect. Nuts.
To be fair, this region is fairly immune to natural disasters in general. We don't have tornados, hurricanes, urban flooding, large hail, drought, locusts, poisonous snakes, expensive mudslides, tumbleweeds, or extreme heat. It only froze about two days last winter, and it only snowed once. I've got a 14000' mountain an hour east, the Pacific Ocean an hour-and-a-half west and Puget Sound practically at my doorstep. It's home.
I mean, nobody likes the prospect of catastrophic earthquakes but it's one of those problems you can't do anything about, so you just have to change the way you think about it. Of course, it doesn't hurt that my house is above the city of Puyallup's 500-year flood-plain line on the map
