What happened to Seattle after the earthquake?

Now I know that we have already read the book and that we aren’t really going to be talking about the “Odds Against Tomorrow” novel but I just have a question that was never answered, nor brought up within the novel, and it’s the title of this blog post: What happened to Seattle after the earthquake?

We know with big cities such as New York and Los Angeles, that if they get hit with a major natural disaster then the downtown areas will get fixed and cleaned almost immediately. Since those cities make a lot of money. New York City and LA are both top television markets and for the entertainment industry, they need those cities to be okay because the most money is to be made there.

But what about the case of Seattle? I mean Seattle is still a very big city, population and land mass, so how would the rebuilding project go if Seattle were hit but some sort of natural disaster (for the sake of consistency, let’s just say an earthquake)? How quickly would the government respond to help Seattle? Seattle is one of the biggest cities on the west coast and definitely the biggest north of California. I only ask this question because the book mentions how badly Seattle was hit from the earthquake, even having the ones who watched the disaster strike naming them “Generation Seattle” but they never once mention how Seattle was at the time of the story was taken place.

This also makes me wonder about the city of Portland and if they were hit by some sort of disaster, the what would happen to that city? I know in terms of population, Portland is probably the smallest of the big west coast cities, but has one of the highest population growths among those cities. I read this article over the summer saying that Portland has a ridiculously high growing number of college graduates in the city and Portland is starting to become, somewhat of a destination spot for college grads because it has sort of the same feel as San Francisco and/or Seattle without the cost of living.

So, if Portland got hit with an earthquake, how many people outside of the Pacific Northwest would truly care? Assuming that more people outside of LA and/or NYC would care if those cities got hit with a natural disaster. Because it seemed like no one really cared to help Seattle rebuild after their earthquake because the novel never mentions a rebuild.

I also wonder why the author chose Seattle. Out of all the cities to be affected by an earthquake, he chose Seattle. In the near future, if a city were to be affected by an earthquake or a tsunami or whatever the case may be, does the government just say “oh well” even if close to half-a-million Americans call that city home? The story just made me wonder that point that no one seemed to mention.