Nisqually quake shook Olympia 25 years ago. ‘It felt like the end of the world.’
The earthquake struck as Deborah Ross listened to TVW from the fourth floor of an office building at the corner of Union Avenue Southeast and Plum Street in Olympia on Feb. 28, 2001.
“It was clear right off that it was an earthquake and I scrambled under my big table,” Ross wrote in her diary. “But it turned out to be a BIG quake - the building seemed to be shaking itself to pieces and went on and on. I started shaking myself and couldn’t tell whether or when the earth shaking stopped.”
Ross, who then chaired the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, exited the building along with several others at the direction of a safety manager.
“I didn’t stop for my fanny pack, coat, or keys, which was dumb, since I should have realized that we wouldn’t be going back in any time soon,” Ross wrote. “But by this time I was crying & all shook up.”
A crowd gathered outside and consoled each other as building monitors checked for any people still inside, she wrote.
“The building monitors did their jobs with cool competence – with their bright vests and hard hats and first aid kits, going through the building to make sure it was evacuated. So all the training for this day really paid off. There was only one injury in our building – one man scraped his head.”
Ross is now part of the part of the Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House. She shared her account of the 2001 Nisqually earthquake with The Olympian just before its 25th anniversary. The 6.8-magnitude earthquake shook the entire Puget Sound region, causing roughly $2 billion in total damage and over $300 million in insured losses, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
To mark the anniversary, The Olympian looked to our archives to resurface first-hand accounts of the earthquake.
Stories about the quake dominated the newspaper for March 1, 2001. The front page featured a photo by former staff photographer Steve Bloom that showed rubble from the Washington Federal Savings Building on the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue in downtown Olympia.
Casey McKee, an employee of the Fifth Avenue Fabric and Clothing Gallery, ran for the nearest door as soon as she realized what was happening.
“It felt like the end of the world,” McKee told The Olympian in 2001. “It felt very frightening.”
Rachel Hanson, a then 15-year-old North Thurston High School sophomore, said she was in the school auto shop when the shaking started.
“It was kind of scary; all the cars suddenly had hydraulics,” Hanson said.
Students rushed for the exits.
“Everyone started running, and my friend and I had to wait to go outside so we didn’t get trampled,” Hanson said.
Leeroy Cohen, a high school senior, did not feel as frightened.
“It felt like a big ol’ tidal wave,” Cohen said. “I tried to stand up, and I felt like I was riding the wave. I thought it was fun at first, but then it kept going on, so I got in a doorway.”
The earthquake cracked the state Capitol dome and damaged dozens of office buildings, The Olympian reported. The damage prompted state leaders to cancel the legislative session.
Gigi Talcott, a Republican who represented Tacoma communities, described a chaos on the fourth floor of the John L. O’Brien office building.
“There was smoke and then the sprinklers came on and then there was water running down the marble steps,” Talcott said.
The City of Olympia evacuated over a dozen buildings after initial inspections deemed them unsafe, The Olympian reported. One of them was the Olympian Apartments building where Allion Brewer resided.
“I was hearing walls, rips, stuff like that,” Brewer said. “Things falling, people hollering outside. They must have been watching how our building was dancing.”
The damage left 52 residents temporarily without a home. Some of them, including Brewer, went to a Red Cross shelter at the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on Harrison Avenue.
James Carlson said he heard cracking in his apartment. At the time, he was applying shampoo into his hair in front of his kitchen sink. He said he dropped a towel on his head, grabbed a jacket and made his way out the front door.
He rinsed the shampoo out of his hair after the shaking ended and got to a radio.
“It’s really strange,” Carlson said. “You think you’re going to do this, and you’re going to do that in a situation. I didn’t do any of that. I should have grabbed my cellular phone. I should have grabbed my briefcase.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2026 at 5:15 AM with the headline "Nisqually quake shook Olympia 25 years ago. ‘It felt like the end of the world.’."
