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News & ArtsMonday, October 26, 2009
Transportation / Politics Why Did the State Release the Viaduct Video—A Week Before the Election?
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 5:04 PM
Washington State Department of Transportation spokespeople claimed that they had to publicly release a fiery simulation of the viaduct collapsing in an earthquake because a private citizen requested it. "We're simply complying with a public disclosure request and by law we have to release it," WSDOT spokesman Ron Paananen told KING TV. But that's not exactly true. He tells The Stranger today that the state only had to provide the video to the citizen who requested it—in fact, the video that the state posted on YouTube is a different video than the one the citizen requested.
“Truth be told, I haven’t received the video,” says Elizabeth Campbell, the Magnolia neighborhood resident who filed the records request last month.
The alarming video—which has now circulated on all local media outlets—simulates the elevated freeway collapsing, the waterfront liquefying, fires consuming people and buildings, and cars tumbling into Elliott Bay. It gets to the heart of an incendiary issue in the mayor’s race: The longer we delay building a tunnel—or any viaduct replacement—the more likely this doomed scenario will befall the city.
Politically speaking, the video’s release seems to benefit mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan, who has pushed to build the tunnel as quickly as possible. Conversely, it seems to hurt challenger Mike McGinn, who has said he would allow the tunnel to proceed, but only with scrutinizing oversight. Mallahan has repeatedly said that McGinn would delay the project—and now, that delay implies widespread fatalities.
So why did this video come out eight days before the election?
WashDOT completed the video in June 2007, but kept it private because, “We felt it was a little too dramatic,” Paananen says. But WSDOT received Campbell’s request on September 23 for a “draft” of the video in addition to around 1,000 other documents. “We were looking through [the records request] and we decided what can we release when,” he says. He believes the agency applied to extend the 30-day limit on releasing documents because there were so many records. “Some of these requests get so big we have to get stuff lined up a little bit at a time to get it released,” he says.
“They have said that it would take six to eight months,” says Campbell. But she suspects WSDOT released the video now for political reasons. She says that the city council's bill supporting a tunnel, a high-profile ceremony with the mayor and governor, and the graphic portrayal of a viaduct disaster are all timed to make the tunnel seem like the "inevitable." She adds that the video's release is also geared to portray McGinn, who could delay the tunnel's construction, as a poor choice for mayor.
Cary Moon is a member of the viaduct stakeholder's group, which was a sounding board to state agencies regarding the best viaduct replacement. The group never recommended the tunnel, though some members gave the tunnel their blessing after the stakeholders finished their work. "I am really disturbed as a stakeholder that there was an increased risk of [the viaduct] failing and they never mentioned that this video existed," she says. "They picked the solution with the longest timeline to complete and the most risk."
Rather than simply release the draft video to Campbell—which, again, it still hasn’t done—WSDOT decided to post the video on YouTube and its website, with text and finishing touches that didn’t appear in the video requested. “We decided we should release the final video because it was completed,” Paananen says.
“I think they should have released it two years ago when they made it," says McGinn. "We all know the viaduct isn’t safe and needs to be taken down, and if they went through the expense of making a visual depiction of it, they should have shared it with the advisory group while they were deciding how to proceed."
So the state received a records request, told Campbell it could be up to eight months, decided to release the video in one month, and then—rather than simply release the video to the persons who requested it—decided to release a more detailed version publicly.
The decision behooves Governor Christine Gregoire—who has been a strong advocate for the tunnel and who has endorsed Mallahan. Her office also knew the video would be posted. "We were aware because of our close relationship to WSDOT as [once of the governor’s] cabinet agencies,” said Gregoire spokeswoman Diana Lahmann. “But as far as timing goes, we were not involved.”
“I know it looks like bad timing but it was bad timing to get a request on September 23,” says Paananen.
Earthquake SCARY... Tunnel GOOD.
Am I missing something or is this two entirely different discussions?
Mallahan's going to lose anyway, and crap like this will only make McGinn's victory over the array of powers that be aligned against him even sweeter.
Fuck you, Gregoire. Someone please tell me there's a federal investigation in here somewhere.
This is just the most recent example.
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Like you think they aren't trying to make you vote their way for their insider-chosen elite comrades ....
Too bad it's starting to backfire.
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There's no way this was anything but a well-timed release to boost Mallahan and the tunnel. WSDOT plays dirty like that. They're not the neutral engineers who just quietly do what the state tells them - they're an actively pro-road, anti-transit group of people with deep ties to the industry.
No! No!- we don't want to know-
not NOW, at least...
what a bunch of hypocritical biased hack assholes.
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Here are some reference maps:
http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/pacnw/lifelin…
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/pacn…
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Using the Fair-and-Balanced™ reporting model up 11th Ave E now, huh?
Wow. Just... wow.
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Unfortunately, both portals fail the above criteria. It'll be really expensive to engineer that problem out, which is probably why they're so gungho about it.
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The later released this simulation of what would happen to the Chase (nee Wamu) Tower:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfC0RyRPW…
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http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?Dis…
There is a similar tunnel under the city of Everett, it has been there nearly as long.
Both came before, and will outlast our viaduct by a few decades.
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http://mcginnformayor.com/endorsements/
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It took 10 years of engineering work before they began the Great Northern tunnel, and that was using relatively simple tunneling techniques that have been around since the 1500s.
Furthermore, the Everett "tunnel" is actually a cut.
Do your homework next time.
Thanks for beating me to the tunnel liquefaction herring.
@23
Those maps you linked to, looked like they were more maps of faulting, ground acceleration, and sediment deposits. I guess you can extrapolate liquefaction potential from that, but I don't know that they are really direct representations of such.
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There's a good map in there in the appendix about earthquakes. There's also, ahem, a section on snowstorms that is so terribly thin that it removes all shock.
Really and back off the bottle a bit, esp. the really cheap stuff at happy hours
This is utter trash reporting.
This is sad how a topic this important is subject less to reason than to politics.
No, it's not a lot less dangerous. If you're above ground, you have a better chance to survive. If even part of the tunnel liquifies, or the exit area crumbles, or there is a multi-car collision within the tunnel after the quake, you have NO chance whatsoever. Saying "there are no guarantees in life" doesn't exactly justify a crazy and dangerous plan that will cost billions of dollars.
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Even the NOAA Tsunami report says:
"Because the nature of the tsunami depends on the initial deformation of the earthquake,
which is poorly understood, the largest source of uncertainty is the input earthquake. The
earthquake scenario used in this modeling was selected to honor the paleoseismic
constraints, but the next Seattle fault earthquake may be substantially different from these.
Sherrod and others (2000) show that an uplift event at Restoration Point predating the A.D.
900–930 event was smaller. Trenching of subsidiary structures to the Seattle fault that are
thought to be coseimic with the main fault trace (Nelson and others, 2002) indicate that there
were at least two earthquakes in the 1500 years before the A.D. 900–930 event. These,
however, did not produce prominent uplifted wavecut platforms similar to the one made by
the A.D. 900–930 event, suggesting that significant earthquakes have occurred on the fault
that had different and smaller uplifts in central Puget Sound."
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/PDF/wals27…
In English: "We really are just speculating with this ridiculous map and the largest quake in known history did not produce tsunamis anywhere near the height as this scare tactic scenario aimlessly speculates at and quakes before that didn't even register."
Oh, God, hardball politics. Who, oh who would have anticipated that ...
God, you all are in never never land with the ghost of MJ, except he gets all the royalities.
The contract is the modern form of patronage ... what a surprise.
Mc Ginn is toast ... he would be good on the council in two years ... build his resume, good pay, and he looks like a good paycheck would help him pay for haircuts, get used to it.
The state has no business giving video to a news outlet rather than the person who ORIGINALLY asked for it.
I'm sure the state Attorney General will back the Governor.
And have people already forgotten who Cary Moon is? Grant Cogswell's in on this too, n00bs. He's not just a failed, alcoholic filmmaker: He's a failed alcoholic activist too! That's why he fucked off to Portland: Nobody bought what he was selling anymore. They tend not to when you spend nearly ten years fighting to get a monorail onto the ledger that doesn't practically serve enough people, burns 2 billion dollars from the budget, costs everyone a shit ton in MVET fees and never gets built.
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