-- forwarded message, please reply to sender and MMD --

When the [Carousel] Technical Conference comes to Spokane in May, we
may have a topic for discussion that is a first for us.  We knew we
were the first carousel to survive a volcano eruption -- the eruption
of Mount St. Helens covered Spokane and the carousel with nearly four
inches of ash.

Now we are dealing with earthquakes.  The first ones began last spring.
Unknown to many of us, there is a dormant fault lying under the Spokane
area.  So dormant, in fact, that it hasn't been heard of for 14 million
years... until now.

The quakes were shallow, which meant they are a sudden jolt; a magnitude
3.8 was the biggest in the spring.  And, we discovered that the carousel
is right in the middle of the epicenter zone, and that these shallow
jolts were enough to move the center pole.

Unfortunately, we discovered not soon enough that this movement of
the center pole damaged some of the main driving gears.  We have been
limping through the summer and fall seasons, hoping nothing big would
occur until our normal shutdown period in January.  Since our big
machine in essence has one extra set of gears above the hub gear, we
put the machine in a sort of "free float" to compensate for the damage.

Sunday we awoke to a magnitude 4.0 quake at 8 AM, with several more
large quakes during the day.  An aftershock in the evening was of the
magnitude of the original spring quake: 3.8.  Again, all were centered
in the downtown area of Spokane [close to the carousel].  These are
shallow quakes -- only 8 miles deep -- so they are abrupt, with no after
wave, but they bounce the center pole quite a bit.

Question:  Has anyone out there in carousel land had to deal with this?
I'm sure they have.  And are there any suggestions?  We are really,
really open to suggestions!

Bette Largent
Spokane WA
http://www.carousel.net/largent/

 [ Hmmm.  An "earthquake detector" accelerometer could deploy a
 [ stabilizing frame under the carousel floor that might save the
 [ big bearing and the gears.  What do they do in Japan and Italy?
 [
 [ Bette Largent is the staff restorationist for the lovely 1909
 [ Looff carousel and Ruth band organ at Riverfront Park in Spokane,
 [ Washington.  See  http://www.spokaneriverfrontpark.com/carrousel.htm
 [ -- Robbie