Good Friday, 1964

[backhoeboogie]

50 years ago today I was a child in Kenai, Alaska. It was bad folks. Really bad. 9.2 earthquake. We had to drink Carnation powder milk for months afterward. I still remember finally getting to drink whole milk again and how good it was. Funny that we take these type of things for granted. Little things.

Google the Good Friday earthquake if you've never heard of it. Tragic for so many. We didn't have much of a network for disaster relief back then.

 

[melking]

My Uncle was in the Air Force there during the quake. I still remember the stories with horror.

 

[Dave]

I was in Anchorage the summer of '65. I remember that block across the street from the Malmute was still one big hole in the ground. And I worked out of Kodiak in '79 and you could still see signs of the damage from '64.

 

[rockridgecattle]

My mother in law and father in law talk about how that earthquake shifted the water table in central Manitoba. For months, clean well water was dirty and awful tasting

 

[backhoeboogie]

My mother in law and father in law talk about how that earthquake shifted the water table in central Manitoba. For months, clean well water was dirty and awful tasting

Makes sense. Never heard that before. It was a megathrust earthquake. Land lifted. Land sunk. Tsunami waves went all across the Pacific and even killed people over a thousand miles from it. The land thrusts under the ocean is what caused the tsunami waves. Land thrusts on shore were visable and still exist.

 

[Limomike]

My cousin was at Fort Wainwright at that time. I remember him saying how they assisted many many people back then. quite a disaster

 

[red angus 2010]

From Alaska Earthquake Information Center
The northwestward motion of the Pacific plate at about 5 to 7 cm per year causes the crust of southern Alaska to be compressed and warped, with some areas along the coast being depressed and other areas inland being uplifted. After periods of tens to hundreds of years, this compression is relieved by the sudden southeastward motion of portions of coastal Alaska as they move back over the subducting Pacific plate.

As a result of the 1964 quake, the Latouche Island area moved about 18 meters to the southeast. Also, the patterns of uplift and subsidence which had been slowly developing prior to the earthquake were suddenly reversed, with areas around Montague Island being uplifted 4-9 meters and areas around Portage down-dropped as much as 3 meters. The hinge line (line of no vertical change separating the uplift and subsidence zones) extended from near the epicenter in Prince William Sound to the SE coast of Kodiak Island. This vertical deformation affected and area of approximately 250,000 km2 (100,000 miles2). The end results was the movement of the Pacific plate under the North American plate by about 9 meters on average.

If nothing else just pause and consider the final sentence. They are talking about the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate! Huge pieces of the earths crust (loosely speaking) and this one event subducted the pacific UNDER the north american 29.52 FEET.

 

[Nesikep]

wow, 9.2 is some sort of quake!.. I don't think imagination could do it justice.. around here I'm sure mountians would have serious slides