50th anniversary of the Big One

[roguevalley]

50 years ago this month the greatest earthquake to hit North America struck Alaska:

ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS: First in a series about the 1964 Alaska earthquake

When the ground stopped moving, 8-year-old Penny Mead and her little brother, Paul, were sitting on the hood of an old light green Plymouth station wagon out on the Cook Inlet mud flats. The earthquake had been so loud. Now it was quiet. Not far away, water lapped the shore.

When they had climbed on that car, minutes earlier, it was parked outside their house on Chilligan Drive in Anchorage's Turnagain neighborhood. Now it was lodged in a bizarre new landscape next to the ruins of their garage. Broken chunks of snowy ground, rafts of mud, and upended trees stretched all around them. Behind them, across 150 feet of debris, a newly formed cliff rose three stories. Near the top of it, torn pipes stuck out of the earth, dripping. Sandy soil trickled down the bluff.

There had been four Mead children in the house when it started -- Penny and her three brothers, Perry, 12, Paul, 4, and Merrell, 2. There had been a yard. There had been a driveway. Now there were just two of them. The house was crushed. The driveway was gone. Paul was crying. He had no shoes.

Penny heard a voice, and saw Tay Thomas, a neighbor, across the mess. Thomas and her two kids were climbing a tree, trying to get to the top of the bluff. Penny slid off the station wagon and coaxed Paul to follow her back toward the cliff.

(Tay Thomas was the daughter in law of the writer and explorer Lowell Thomas. Edit: I am totally surprised that Tay came back. When she left after this she vowed never to return. Go for her. The Lowells are institutions here.) Penny lost two of her brothers. The ground liquidified. I personally believe the dead sunk into the quicksand in some places.)

(A friend and their family were in a car in Anchorage on Benson. She said it was like riding on a boat in seven foot swells, going way the hell up and coming down, then doing it again.)

THE QUAKE LASTED NEARLY FIVE MINUTES!

The new MMS measure makes it a 9.2 scale earthquake that covered one half million miles. If it had been on a work day it would have been even worse. Anchorage was devastated, Seward and Valdez which are coastal towns were flattened and no one walked away unscathed.

HERE ARE A FEW EXAMPLES OF TSUNAMI WAVE HEIGHT as the result of the 1964 Alaska earthquake

SHOUP BAY in VALDEZ INLET - 220’ HIGH

OLD VALDEZ - 30’ HIGH (That city was obliterated. The Valdez now is rebuilt on higher ground)

OLD CHENEGA on CHENEGA ISLAND - 89.5’ HIGH

WHITTIER on WESTERN EDGE OF PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND - 43’ HIGH

SEWARD (on RESURRECTION BAY) - 30’ HIGH

KAGUYAK (on KODIAK ISLAND) - 30’ HIGH

PORT NELLIE JUAN (PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND) - 49’ HIGH

Chenega, Valdez, Seward, Anchorage, Whittier and Kodiak had the highest death tolls


CHENEGA

The epicenter of the 1964 earthquake was very close to the small village of Chenega in the Prince William Sound. When the shaking started, the villagers knew to turn off their oil stoves, find their children and run up the hill behind the village. The older children ran ahead while the parents stayed behind and valiantly tried to carry their babies and pre-school children to the safety of higher ground, but they ran out of time. Before the ground stopped shaking, the first of three 90' foot tsunami waves came ashore and demolished everything in the village except the school which was on high ground. Water engulfed many of those who were still trying to make it up the hill, and as the waves receded, children were wrenched away from their parents, never to be found again. Nearly one third of the village drowned that day at Chenega and almost half of those that drowned were children.

The 53 survivors were taken to Cordova and never moved back to Chenega Twenty years after the earthquake, the village of NEW CHENEGA was established on Evans Island.


VALDEZ (Val-Deez)

Dozens of adults and children were on the Valdez dock watching the M.V. CHENA unload it's freight just before the earthquake hit. It was almost Easter and fresh flowers and holiday goods were anticipated. When the earth started shaking, a 4,000' x 600' section of the Valdez waterfront slide into the bay which created an immediate 30' localized tsunami wave. People couldn't run fast enough to get off of the dock before it collapsed into the bay, taking with it a warehouse, a packing plant, a cannery, a bar and 28 people, never to be found again. The next 30' wave reached the business center of Valdez, heavily damaging 40% of the businesses, crippling the water, sewer and phone systems; the entire town was damaged beyond repair and it all happened in less than 10 minutes!! The town was later moved to its present day location.

(There is film of someone on a boat filming the tsunami that hit Valdez which even as I write this makes the hair on my arms stand up. The entire harbor got sucked out with fish and boats laying everywhere. Then it came back in. The people who took it survived. I don't know how they did.)

Everyone should go to the Daily news to read about this. It will go on for a number of days, the coverage. The event was March 27, 1964. Incredibly, incredibly sad day for all of us here.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/03/22/3388654/march-27-1964-the-day-the-world.html?sp=/99/100/&ihp=1#storylink=cpy

[Cleita]

1. I had visited Anchorage in the summer of 1968 and much of the damage from the earthquake was still

very visible. What impressed me were all the dead trees. When the land had shifted, valleys dropped enough for the sea to come in and poison the forest with the salt water. It was really spooky to me. Coming from earthquake country myself, I'm familiar with destroyed buildings and bridges but for a whole forest to be lost was a testament to the power of nature to even destroy itself.

[roguevalley]

2. If you drive down where I live you go along the turnagin arm. At Girdwood you can see trees that

sank in the liquifaction. They were sunk down about 3/4 of their height and died. They are just black dead trees now. There is also a couple of buildings that are nearly completely gone there too. Amazingly sad thing. I think there was only one building that didn't suffer damage in Anchorage, a white wood frame. You can see it where they moved it. It has a historic sign talking about it on the wall near the door. I just call it 'the white building' and most know which one.

[SheilaT]

3. On Shaky Ground by John Nance

devotes five chapters at the beginning of the book to the Good Friday Earthquake. The shaking lasted a full five minutes, which is almost unimaginable.

That book is simply the very best earthquake book I have ever read. It came out in 1988 and is well worth reading almost thirty years later.

I'm old enough to remember that earthquake and the early reports that evening on the news. Just imagine if something like that were to happen with today's instant and constant coverage.

[Control-Z]

4. K&R!

Best read in more than a week, for me. Thanks for posting!

[Demeter]

5. .

[scarletwoman]

6. I just can't imagine. What a terrifying experience that must have been to go through!

Thanks for posting.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. The tsunami hit Crescent City, California.

Crescent City Tsunamis

Tsunamis

Crescent City's jettyThe topography of the sea floor surrounding Crescent City has the effect of focusing tsunamis. According to researchers at Humboldt State University and the University of Southern California, the city experienced tsunami conditions 31 times between the years 1933 and 2008. Although many of these incidents were barely perceptible, eleven events included wave measurements exceeding one meter, four events caused damage, and one event in particular is commonly cited as "the largest and most destructive recorded tsunami to ever strike the United States Pacific Coast."

On 27 March 1964, the Good Friday Earthquake off Anchorage, Alaska, set in motion local landslide tsunamis, as well as a trans-Pacific wave. The tsunami wave travel time to Crescent City was 4.1 hours after the earthquake, but it only produced localized flooding. The second and third waves to hit Crescent City were both smaller than the first wave, but the fourth wave struck with a height of approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) after having drawn the harbor out nearly dry. The next morning the damage was counted: 289 buildings and businesses had been destroyed; 1000 cars and 25 large fishing vessels crushed; 12 people were confirmed dead, over 100 were injured, and more were missing; 60 blocks had been inundated with 30 city blocks destroyed in total. Although most of the missing were later accounted for, not all were tracked down. Insurance adjusters estimated that the city received more damage from the tsunami on a block-by-block basis than did Anchorage from the initial earthquake.

[hedgehog]

8. I was a kid when it happened, and recall reading the article that came out later in the National

Geographic. I think the article featured photos of the Mead and Thomas neighborhood, and possibly the survivors themselves. I puzzled over the photos, because they didn't make any sense. I never knew that the ground had fallen away like that.

[pipi_k]

9. It was

big news, even here in Mass.

I was 11 years old, in 6th grade.

It was Good Friday.

[HereSince1628]

10. I think its story is one of the few "Weekly Reader" front pages I remember.

It included this pic or one of the same location

[hunter]

11. I was a kid in Southern California.

My newborn little sister and my mom had recently come home from the hospital so I wasn't paying much attention to the news.

One of my dad's friends was living in Hawaii and had climbed up on his roof to watch the incoming Tsunami. It was a bad idea, his home was destroyed beneath him, but he survived.

The damage to Crescent City scared me the most when I saw the news photos. I had a childish model in my head of places too distant to worry about and Alaska and Hawaii were among those places. But the California coastline seemed much closer to home. After that I've always been wary of sleeping near the ocean even though I love the ocean and have done some idiot things in very large storms and surf.

The terror of such an earthquake and tsunami is almost unimaginable. Seeing all the videos from the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami brings it a lot closer to home and must have caused some PTSD reactions in some of the Alaskan earthquake and tsunami survivors.

The world seems a much smaller place now, thanks to travel and modern communications. We are all neighbors to some extent. Catastrophes like great earthquakes and tsunamis ought to be cause for reflection in all of us.

Why do we fight among ourselves when the universe is so much larger than us and sometimes dangerous? We ought to be looking out for one another, taking care of one another, not fighting, not seeing others as strangers or enemies.

[roguevalley]

12. agreed 100% Hunter

[hfojvt]

13. has it been that long?