My grandmother told me about this earthquake/tsunami when I was trying to learn everything I could about my grandfather before he died. At that time he was a navy pilot flying missions in the bearing strait, and she was living on a small airstrip somewhere on the Alaskan coast with their three babies. The earthquake hit in the evening and the buildings had no foundation, so they slid around a bit, but mostly everybody just went to sleep. A couple of the CPOs were frantic and spent the night chaining the barracks to ground anchors. The water came in silently and floated the barracks, then left with most of the sailors sleeping through it. In the morning, many of the buildings that weren’t anchored had been swept out to sea.
As far as I know the 1958 earthquake barely gets a historical mention unless it is to talk about the Lituya Bay incident.
The 1964 quake was extremely destructive and caused tidal waves that destroyed towns like Cordova and Valdez. These were "normal" sized tidal waves, not 1700 ft monsters like Lituya Bay.
As a relevant anecdote, my Dad (who as only 3 years old at the time) and his immediate family lived in Valdez. Thankfully their house was away from the water and they escaped the worst effects. But many friends and townspeople were not so lucky. They all moved to Anchorage afterwards to start over.
I've always been fascinated by this event. I would love to see a realistic CGI recreation given the absence of actual footage. However, this write up is the next best thing.
This is one of my favorite stories. The fisherman survivors (not mentioned in this scientific account?) riding the megatsunami experienced something rarer than walking on the moon.
At the time, there were three fishing boats anchored near the entrance of the bay. One of these boats sunk and the two people on board lost their lives. The other two boats were able to ride the wave. Among the survivors were William A. Swanson and Howard G. Ulrich, who later provided accounts of their observations.
American fishermen aren’t known for their accuracy. I haven’t read their account, but I’d be curious how credible it is. At the same time, what an experience, good chance it would sound fake even if it were real. This event is virtually unfathomable.
Thanks so much for sharing that. I like how he specifically called out that the 1700 feet was the height of splashes, and the wave itself was about 100 feet tall. The other fisherman said the face was about two boat lengths (40 foot boat) so these are really good observations, and seem to lack embellishment.
Time to google search for a computer simulation of this.
Those are not the mention of the two boats that rode it out? I'm confused how what they described is even possible. That would have been a good story from those two survivors.
Using this event to think about what an asteroid hitting the ocean might be like is quite clever.
"The author suggested that with proper scale corrections, analogies could be drawn between the impulsive impact of the Lituya Bay rockfall to asteroid impact on ocean floor sediments and on such impulsive wave generation. Although, the trajectory angle, terminal velocity and total mass and density of material of an asteroid would be significantly different than those of the Lituya Bay rockfall, it was suggested that these could be scaled and adjusted for the purpose of validating a model of asteroid impact."
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated with natural disasters. This is the one of the most fascinating ones. Can you imagine a giant wall of water this size coming at you?
I often sit and think about the Missoula Floods and struggle to fathom what these walls of water would have looked and felt like as an onlooker. When I was told about the flood (it was thought to be one big event when I was a kid) I thought people were pulling my leg. This is such a wild world be live on.
Depending on the scale and speed it probably would register as something "off", but not necessarily dangerous. As in out-of-context, does not compute. I mean, just look at the videos of the tsunami in Thailand, 26 December, 2004. Most don't get it. How should they, if they have never experienced it before?
Maybe OT, but to demonstrate a similar thing I once experienced: Been bicycling in the forest like ever so often, and something was off. Stopped.
Thought someone suddenly built a large, long wall or building there within a few days, because it wasn't there before. Went about 100 to 150 meters into the forest to investigate what it was. A massive wall of whitegrey smoke, with many nests of flames between 50cm and one meter high. Didn't recognize it as such until I saw the flames shining through. Really thought of it as a wall until then.
