The quake reportedly scared one Everett schoolteacher so much that she reportedly fainted in front of her class. A state liquor store in Snohomish reported much of its supply had crashed to the floor, and a vat of hot lead, then used in typography, spilled at The Everett Herald, covering a 15-foot area with molten metal. But history records that the area hasn't always been so lucky with quakes. Members of the Tulalip Tribes tell of a horrific earth slide in the mid-1800s that buried a summer village on the south end of Camano Island. More than 100 people died in the slide at Camano Head and the great wave kicked up by the collapse.
Some historians believe the disaster was triggered by a powerful earthquake.
People felt the shaking for 20 seconds and as long as about two minutes in the Gold Bar area, said Roger Serra, director of the county's Department of Emergency Management. The longer shaking near Gold Bar likely indicates unstable soils from river sediments, said Mike McCallister, emergency management planning coordinator. Serra opened up an emergency response center at Paine Field immediately to determine if there were injuries or where there was property damage. A Snohomish County sheriff's helicopter was dispatched within minutes of the earthquake, first doing an aerial inspection of Culmback Dam in the Sultan Basin. The earth dam holds back Spada Lake, the prime water source for the county.