An aftershock rattled western Washington state early on Thursday after a powerful earthquake shook the Seattle area on Wednesday, causing at least $1 billion in damage but miraculously only one death. A spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey said the aftershock was felt at 1.10 a.m. Pacific Time about 24 km southwest of Tacoma, along the same fault line as Wednesday‘s major quake. „It was felt across the Seattle region,“ said a USGS spokesman, adding that there were no injuries or serious damage caused by the aftershock. Wednesday‘s quake had a magnitude of 6.8, considered strong enough to cause extensive damage and injuries. However there was only one report of a fatality, although scores of people were injured. A 66-year-old woman died of a heart attack after the quake, marking the first confirmed fatality after the temblor. Seattle officials said about 25 people were being treated in local hospitals for injuries and that four were in serious condition after being crushed by debris.

Seattle Mayor Paul Schell said the city was open for business Thursday, adding that given the size of the quake it was a miracle that there were not more injuries or deaths.

Too Early To Estimate Damage

The mayor said a lot of buildings had been damaged but it was too early to give an accurate estimate of exactly how much damage was caused. The quake struck moments before Schell was to give a news conference to explain how Mardi Gras celebrations on Tuesday night got out of control, injuring 70 people and prompting police to fire tear gas and rubber pellets to disperse crowds. It was the region‘s first big quake since a 6.5 tremor rocked the area on April 29, 1965. A 7.1-magnitude quake in 1949 killed eight people. Wednesday‘s quake cracked the dome of the state Capitol in Olympia, sent bricks tumbling from historic buildings in Pioneer Square, trapped people at the top of Seattle‘s landmark World‘s Fair Space Needle, triggered landslides that plugged the river that delivers the city‘s water and led to the temporary closure of the Seattle-Tacoma airport. The quake also cut power to 200,000 in the western part of the state and damaged windows at the corporate campus of software giant Microsoft Corp. Geophysicists put the quake‘s epicenter 50 km southwest of Seattle, and 16 km northeast of Olympia along the coast of Puget Sound.

Washington state Gov. Gary Locke declared a state of emergency, estimating the damage to roads and buildings in the billions of dollars.

(Reuters)