Tsunami!

The tsunamis that followed the Good Friday Earthquake caused the major loss of life and property in Alaska, proving more devastating than the earthquake itself. Generated by the sudden upward movement of the seafloor along a rupturing fault, tsunami waves can travel thousands of miles and strike low-lying coasts hours after an earthquake with violent force, while similar destructive waves can also be produced by submarine landslides that rapidly displace huge volumes of water with soil debris. During the Good Friday Earthquake, some places such as Anchorage were barely affected, but coastal communities with different topography, including Chenega, Kodiak, Seward, and Valdez, suffered complete ruin. Valdez, a thriving city of 1200 people at the head of a fjord in Prince William Sound, depended on fishing, shipping, and tourism. When the earthquake struck at 5:36 p.m., the city heaved violently, fissures opened and spewed mud, water, and sewage 20 feet into the air, and a submarine landslide beneath the harbor generated a 40 foot wave that instantly destroyed the harbor, docks, canneries, and the 28 people on the dock watching the unloading of the 400 foot Liberty Ship SS Chena. The ship bottomed out three times and rolled and pitched so violently that three seamen were killed, but when the wave retreated it carried the vessel out to sea relatively undamaged. Successive tsunamis completed Valdez’s destruction, and afterward the city moved to a seismically safer site four miles northwest of the original location. Seward, one of the few ice free ports in Southcentral Alaska with an active year-round fishing and industrial economy, was struck at 5:36 p.m. on March 27, 1964. Forty-five seconds after the shaking began, large sections of its waterfront and harbor slid into the bay, the Standard Oil dock ruptured and spilled fuel, overturned tanks exploded and burned, and a 30 foot wall of water generated by a submarine landslide and covered in burning oil engulfed what remained of the harbor and dock area. Forty oil-filled railroad tank cars then exploded in a chain reaction. As people fled to high ground fearing tsunamis, the first tsunami struck 25 minutes after the earthquake with 40 foot waves moving 100 mph and still ablaze with burning oil. The final tsunami left 10 hours later, leaving 13 people dead and Seward totally devastated.

Anchorage, Alaska · United States