1964 Alaskan Earthquake – Personal AccountsMenuSkip to content

Home

About

MARCH 27, 2014

Rocky PlotnickMy dad’s store, Union Leader, was on the block of 4th Ave. that sunk two stories. That day I had been shopping downtown with a classmate. We were going to wait at dad’s store for a ride home but her dad was able to get us earlier. So when the quake hit we were in her Airport Heights home reading Beatles’ magazines. I remember standing in the hallway of the house hanging on for dear life. The noise was horrific. It was a bit like being on a small boat in confused and stormy seas. But worse. When it finally stopped I called my mom at home to tell her I was okay. Then I walked home listening to an odd silence. Dad showed up that evening – his store and inventory destroyed. As darkness covered Anchorage, I starred out at the lack of lights from downtown. Only an occasional car light appeared. We listened to Genie Chance on the radio as she relayed messages between friends & family reporting their status. My grandpa (Commissioner of Commerce Abe Romick) flew up from Juneau with Governor Bill Egan to inspect the damage. Fifty years ago today and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Rocky Plotnick

Posted in Rocky Plotnick | Leave a comment

MARCH 24, 2014

Patrick HamesAt the time of the earthquake, I was an A2C (E3) stationed with the 5040th CAM Grp Hq. The building was shared with the Air Police Sq. and was across the street from Hangar 1. I was cleaning Col. Hubbs office when I began to hear loud noises in the building that I thought were coming from the Air Police changing shift. When I felt the building moving, I went into the hallway and noticed several Air Policemen looking every which way. We all ran out the front door. There was a water tower in front of the building and it was swaying a lot. I ran far enough so that if it fell, I would be clear. After the worse of the tremors, I went to my barracks and changed into my fatigues and returned to the office. Col. Hubbs called looking for his driver who couldn’t be located. For a couple of days I drove the Col. around to the various squadrons for which he was responsible.

The chow halls were closed for some period; I don’t remember how long. We were issued c rations which still had cigarettes included that had patriotic messages on them, such as “Buy War Bonds”.

Posted in Patrick Hames | Leave a comment

MARCH 24, 2014

Eric W. ClarkI was a little over six years old at the time of the 64 quake, so this is what I remember. We lived near Jewel lake, I don’t remember the streets in that area having names, there was a large wooden sign at the end of our street like the forest service would have at camp grounds with the name Jewel Lake Small Tracts, no one had mail delivery you had to go to the post office in Spenard to get your mail. It was not until a few years later our area finally had named streets ours was Jade Street. Just like anyone else who experienced the earthquake especially at a young age it was dinner time and you were watching Fireball XL5 one minute and the next it was the end of the world.

My parents came to Alaska in the 1940’s my dad came up with the Army Air Corps, and was a radio operator for the 10th Air Sea Rescue, after his service he started work for the Alaska Rail Road as a helper in the radio department he ended his career in 1977 as the Chief Communications Officer. My mother had come up to Alaska with a friend via the Alaska Steamship Company; they had come up to Alaska to work in the Tuberculosis Sanitariums for the Jessie Lee home in Seward. That is where my parents met in Seward; they were married there in 1950.

We lived on a 2 ½ acre lot and had another 2 ½ acre lot across the street, My dad had received the land that was given to veterans in the early 1950’s with the requirement they had to build a livable structure in a set amount of time. My dad had never built a home before, and it was a learning experience for him, with many of the parts like the plumbing and electrical system being ordered from the Sears catalog. It was a small wood frame 2 bedroom home it was 24 X 32, it was sturdy as it was a bit overbuilt. It was on wooden piling foundation, the walls and floor were constructed of 1X6 tongue

and groove set at a 45° angle, then plywood over that, on the exterior it also had a layer of that old brown fiberboard, then tar paper, and finally lap siding.

JEWEL LAKE HOME 1950s

My Parents had just purchased a new TV for Christmas so it was only 3 month old, and for us to be able to watch “our show” at dinner time was a great thing. Sometime during the our show the earthquake hit, we were use to having earthquakes so at first we just sat there, then after what could not have been more than a few seconds it was apparent that this was not the usual quake, I can’t remember what was said if anything but we all started to get up and get out of the house after the TV fell over. We had a small arctic entry at the back of the house that we always used to enter the home or exit; we made our way out of the home my parents in the lead followed by my brother with me in the back. As we were making our way out through the small kitchen and out the back door the house would sway and roll with the ground waves. It was difficult to stand up much less walk. As the house would roll in one direction the kitchen cabinets and cupboards would open and dishes and pots and pans would fly out, then the house would roll to the other side and those cabinets and cupboards would close and the cabinets and cupboards on the other side would open and boxed and can goods would fly out. As we reached the arctic entry I fell down, no one noticed since it was quite a chaotic and somewhat terrifying experience, it seemed like it was every man for himself at that point, I crawled outside and stood up my dad said to get into the car which was a 1962 VW beetle we sat in that car bouncing up and down and sideways all at the same time. While we were sitting in the car my dad shut the power to the house off and turned off the propane at the tank valve. As I remember the sound it was a loud low pitched rumble somewhat like a train. The ground had waves and the trees pitched back and forth. There was a birch tree in our yard that branched out into a large Y, this tree split down the middle. In the days after the earthquake we slept in the living room on a hide-a-bed and couch to keep us all together and feeling somewhat safer as there were many aftershocks.

Our home did not sustain any damage other than the log-cribbed cesspool caved in. That summer my dad added cement piers under the house to augment the wooden pilings just in case we had another big earthquake.

My dad was working for the railroad and had responsibility to keep the communications lines and microwave stations from Anchorage to Seward up and running. Immediately

after the earthquake he was working to get the communication systems up-and running. He had volunteered to walk to Portage with a power supply for the microwave station but his supervisors would not allow that as it would have been too dangerous. My dad finally was able to get a ride on an Army Corps of Engineers helicopter to Portage. He spent a few days and nights at Portage on the roof of a microwave station with some other employees, with a generator and 3 pumps trying to keep the water out of the building. My dad also worked on getting the phone lines to Seward up, as the railroad tracks and telephone poles at the Seward side of Kenai Lake had “disappeared” and all but radio communications towards Seward was unavailable.

The earthquake seemed to go on forever but it did stop, it did leave me with a lifetime fear of earthquakes and it has been only in the last 8-10 years when we have an earthquake at night where I don’t wake up and bolt out of bed yelling EARTHQUAKE start to run for the door, now I just wake up and wait for it to stop.

Eric W Clark

Posted in Eric W. Clark | 1 Comment

JUNE 22, 2013

William ZiesemerI was stationed at Elmendorf during the earthquake as an Air Policeman. I still remember when the quake happened. We were in the basement floor of the air police headquarters when the wooden building began to shake. One airman said a bomb, while a couple of others said earthquake. We ran out of the building and hung on to the wire mesh fence across the street. The road looked like waves in the ocean. All of the air police trucks looked like they were dancing as they were bouncing up and down. A bunch of us ran and put the emergency brakes on and that helped stop the moving. Then a staff sergeant told me to go into the building and search for injured. The building was still swaying, but I checked every room. Everybody had gotten out. It was a long day, as I was up at 5 am and worked one of the gates on base. Then I was on the swat team, if that is what you want to call it. Ten airman had to be on call after our shift. What a long night, they put me at the bank guarding it along with the bank workers. The next morning we drove around the base looking for more injured. I finally got to bed and 4 pm.

What I still remember is one airman took his sleeping bag and stayed by the front door on the first floor. His room was on the third floor. About a week later, I had the top bunk, we had an after shock. The wall began to crack and the crack went all the way down the wall. My roommate and I headed for the door. By that time in shock quit. I was not able to call home until Sunday, as the only information out was by ham radio. I was working in the Alaska Air Command Headquarters, checking ID, as the place was busy on Sunday. This First Lt, asked me if I called home yet. He let me use the phone to call my parents.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

MAY 8, 2013

James Boyd MidlothianThe following is my recollection of Friday, March 27, 1964.

It was 5:30 pm and I had just finished my shower. I was planning a night out on the town since I had turned 20 yrs. old three days earlier. I was sitting in the barracks at the Kodiak Naval Base reading the week old Oklahoma City Times. I barely got through the front page and noticed a little shaking of the paper in my hands. I dismissed it, thinking it was one of the sub hunters revving its engines at the nearby hangar. Suddenly the closed and latched doors of the lockers in front of me sprang open. I and one other seaman yelled simultaneously “it’s an earthquake”.

The barracks and showers were full of Seabees and Marines getting ready for the weekend parties. Most were partially or completely naked. It was very hard to remain on your feet as we all headed for the stairs at the same time. We pretty much went down in a pile. I remember standing on the bottom step of the doorway to the barracks and watching lightning on the ground. The ground was alive. All around you and as far as you could see the ground was splitting with cracks from as wide as an inch to hairline cracks. The power poles were all swaying in unison. Water and Gas lines were breaking underground all around. And at the same time you felt like you were standing on a giant vibrator.

The one thing I remember most while I was standing there in my shorts was where did all the girls come from. We rarely saw a female on base. And there must have been 8 or 10 screaming girls and women within a few yards of our barracks. Never figured out where they came from. Of course liberty was canceled and we were ordered to muster. The Seabees were in charge of the Motor Pool on base. We provided services to the base in all phases of transportation. As well as snow removal and road repair on the Island. My first assigned task was to transport a squad of armed Marines to the town of Kodiak. The first wave had hit and took out the town. It took about an hour and a half to get there because of the condition of the roads.

Rock slides had blocked many areas and we had to clear the road before proceeding. When we arrived I couldn’t believe the destruction. The streets were littered with everything from rifles to cash. Looting was already taking place. The buildings that were on the waterfront were all displaced and in the middle of what used to be the streets. Over the next 24 hours, the tides became increasingly higher and higher. Soon the base power plant was under water and we lost all power to the base.

Our entire Company spent the next two weeks working 12 to 15 hour days doing whatever we could to help anyone that needed it. I remember when the C130 arrived from Seattle with the replacement power plant. Word was that it took over two days to get it loaded and secured on the plane and we had it unloaded and operational in about 18 hours.

When my tour of duty was finished I was able to spend some time in Anchorage while on the way back to the States. I have since been in another earthquake while visiting California. Two is enough. I ‘m glad I live Texas. I am now 63 years old and I plan to drive the Alcan Highway next summer. Sure hope the ground ain’t shakin’.

Thanks for the opportunity to share this experience, James Boyd Midlothian, Texas

Posted in James Boyd Midlothian | Leave a comment

MARCH 26, 2013

Anne B. RoysterMy family and I were living on Cherry Hill on Elemendorf. It was Good Friday and we were getting ready to go to the base officer’s club for dinner. I was in the basement of the base housing getting socks out of the dryer. My oldest brother (about 16 or 18) was down the street visiting friends. My parents, other brother and younger sister were upstairs on the main floor.

I heard this loud roar and my father yelling for us to get out of the house. I was running up the steps which was a real chore since cans were flying off the shelf at the top of the steps (our pantry) and each step was in a different place than the one before, i.e., step up and then down….once I finally reached the top, I ran out behind my mother who was carrying my sister. Dad stayed in the house and the rest of us stayed on the ground in the parking lot. We were behind parked vehicles and every vehicle was moving in a different direction than the one beside it. Eventually we saw my oldest brother trying to run home. He was staggering like he’d been drinking but it was the movement of the earth. He finally reached us and Dad had us get into the family car where we stayed for quite a while. When we finally got to go back into the house, it was a wreck. Not structurally but the contents. It was as if someone took a huge mixing spoon and just had at it.

My parents had had a party not too many days before the earthquake and there was cocktail sauce all over the floor, there was pepto-bismol from the cabinet, mercurochrome and all of this along with the rest of the contents of the refrigerator and cabinets was being mixed together by the freestanding dishwasher. It was a mess. My father used snow and the snow shovel to help clean it up. My mother had just received a brand new set of china for Christmas and the only thing left was a cup and saucer. The rest was on the floor, broken from the china cabinet, though it still stood where it had been.

Everything was going to be ok until my brother went upstairs and flushed the toilet – thereafter we had to melt snow in order to flush!

There were a lot of aftershocks. Some seemed just as hard as the original. My dad tied a pencil to a string and hung it from the ceiling and told us if it writes our name on the ceiling, then it’s time to get out.

I remember he was called back to duty and told us to stay in the house and not to let anyone in because people were starting to loot for fuel and money, etc. We are a family that always had firearms and so my mother and older brother were knowledgeable in using them. We didn’t have but one problem with someone coming close to the house. My mother encouraged them to move away.

After a few days, we ventured into Anchorage and saw all the damage. I was about 9 years old (10 in July) and remember almost all of what happened and what we saw but didn’t realize the enormity of it all.

One story I remember is my mother worked for the Girl Scout Council in Anchorage. Her boss lived across from those apartments that were totally destroyed. She had two huge dressers sitting side by side on linoleum tile floors. When they got back to the house, the dressers were where they had always been, but the design on the floor that the dressers caused by the movements, made an interesting track. People came out and actually took pictures of the floor to try to trace the movement. I have pictures somewhere I will try to recover. They are in slide format.

Anyway – that’s pretty much my recollections of the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964. We moved to Virginia in 1965. Where my father retired from Langley AFB.

Anne B. Royster

Posted in Anne B. Royster | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Kathleen Wright –   Elmendorf Thank you so very much for this website. I appreciate the stories. There are few people who actually know what I mean when I say earthquake.

I live in Eureka, CA now, we had a 6.5 in January, 2010. This event brought it all back; the ’64 quake went on forever. It went on so long that I thought that’s how life would be, like standing on a pitching boat. The earth makes a sound when it rips apart. I can’t describe it, but you know it’s a living thing being ripped apart. The quake here, I felt my viscera gather, my insides clenched.

The 1964 Anchorage earthquake – I was 11, my Dad was stationed at Elmendorf.

I felt the house shake and my Mom screamed earthquake. At first you think it’s a sonic boom, or a truck running down the dirt road too fast making the house shake and windows rattle, and then it picked up speed, slammed into the house and everything shook, violently for five minutes. The floor left my feet. I slammed into the wall which became the floor and back. She stuffed my sister and me into the closet, safe under the coats.

Pictures on the wall were flew to perpendicular and then crashed to the floor. Looking out of the window, you could see telephone poles whip back and forth and the power lines snap free from the poles, showering sparks, you would see sky, then ground, furniture scrambled, cupboard doors opened and dishes shot right past us and crashed against the wall. And, it was deafening. It roared in your ears and your ears rang from it. After the quake, my Mom and sister and I went to find my Dad on-base, (Elmendorf). He worked in a two-story brick building on a grassy knoll. There was another earthquake

right as we pulled up, there were guys yelling and jumping out of second story windows to the ground.

My Mom, who was a force of nature, grabbed us and marched up the front stairs and confronted the biggest, blackest AP (Air Police) I’ve ever seen. And, all he would say is “No, Mam”. “You can’t go in there. Everyone is fine”. Push, shove. “No, Mam”. He barricaded the door with his body and a rifle. He’s the only person I ever saw stop my Mom. I think having the gun helped.

We left, went home and waited for Dad to show up. A breakfront cabinet had fallen against the door to the small room between the kitchen and garage. (We living off base in small house in a place called Nunaka Valley). It was my job to clean up the mess of dishes and the like so we could move the break-front and get into the small room that had an oil-fired heater. The kitchen floor was covered with cinnamon sugar, sprinkle on toast – yum. Now, not so much, can’t stand the scent of cinnamon anymore. We moved the breakfront, Mom started the heater and that’s where we stayed for the longest time. It was March in Alaska. Night came. So cold. No water, no electricity, we used a coffee can for well… you know. The hot water heater, broken free from the connection, spewed water everywhere, it turned to ice. The only dishes we had were in the dishwasher. I still have a hard time unloading the damn thing. They seem safe there.

For military brats who may wish to connect with other military brats – Military Brats Online.http://www.militarybrats.netPosted in Kathleen Wright | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

John & Pat   Steinke In March, 1964, we were an Army family of four, and a longhaired dachshund, living at Fort Richardson. Dad was the DEW Line Communications Director and worked over at Elmendorf Air Force Base. I was thirteen. My little brother was almost three. When “The earthquake” hit, my mother was downstairs. Dad was in the kitchen, fixing his Friday night special – spaghetti. My brother and I were upstairs, on the bed in our parent’s room, watching TV. It sounds kind of corny now, but it was a favorite show, “Fireball XL-5″. The Fireball had just begun its roll-out and was zooming down the track, about to reach the end and launch off on another adventure. When the booster rockets ignited, the picture flickered, and then (as the station lost power and went off the air) the screen went to black, with just a single white dot … a la “The Twilight Zone”.

Of the four of us, only three knew immediately what was happening. Mom and Dad, having lived in California and Japan realized that it was an earthquake, and a big one at that. My brother figured out that the, “Bad Fireball broke TV”. I was your standard, oblivious pre-teen. I didn’t have a clue. I just lay on the bed and went along for the ride as it flew around the room, slamming from one wall to another. I do remember looking out the window and seeing the ground rising and falling, like ocean waves, and thinking, “That doesn’t look right.”

When the shaking was over, Dad came flying up the stairs grabbed my brother and yelled at me to get out of the house. Just before we went out, we all stopped in the pantry to grab hats, coats, mittens and boots. A lot of food had fallen to the floor and

broken open. A package of Lorna Doones was open, laying their golden goodness at our feet. Between my brother and the dog they were disappearing rapidly. When Dad reached down to pick them both up, someone sank teeth into his arm. To the day he died, he would always remark that, “That was the sweetest, most even-tempered dog in the world. She never bit anyone in her life!”

We lived at 524-C Beluga Avenue. Our building was a row unit, with eight apartments. The last two (apartments G and H) had been turned into a double apartment and were the residence of the Post Commanding General. I don’t recall his name, but his wife was really nice and would often invite us kids in for cookies. I remember their living room had a couple of big curio cabinets filled with china, crystal, ivory knick-knacks and other frou-frou stuff. The building acted like a whip during the earthquake, with Unit A serving as the handle. Damage to our apartments (A, B and C) was light, but the General and his wife lost everything.

Calgon & Sun Flower Star

John & Pat Steinke

Posted in John & Pat Steinke | 2 Comments

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Dorothy Armstrong –   Anchorage ANCHORAGE, JUST VISITING!

I was a Flight Attendant with The Flying Tiger Line, and we had just ‘dead headed’ (no passengers) into Anchorage to position for a flight the following day. Having arrived at the hotel shortly before, I had decided on a nap before going into the Red Ram restaurant for dinner. My roommate had asked to use my hair dryer, and I’d told her to help herself. As I was dozing off the shaking started. I thought it was my roommate, and that she was being very inconsiderate in shaking my bed like that. The hair dryer was on a partition that separated our beds, which were what I believe are called ‘day beds’. When the shaking didn’t stop, I sat up and looked around at my roommate, and saw the largest brown eyes I’ve ever seen…even since.

Being a California girl I recognized it was an earthquake, however being close to a SAC base another event did enter our minds! I made about 3 attempts to stand up, and was thrown back onto the bed, I finally gave up and I just shuffled the bed back against the wall each time it rolled into the room. I also moved as far away from the large plate glass window as I could get.

From this position I watched in amazement. The building was a U shape, and the section across from us was rolling in 2 – 3 foot waves. The window glass was also rolling in waves, but in an opposite direction, the street light in the intersection visible from our room was the type that is suspended in the middle of the intersection (not recognizable in this day), and it was spinning wildly. The amazement was in nothing was breaking! I heard the TV in the room above crash, but ours just teetered back and forth, not falling.

When the shaking stopped I immediately went to the door, as I had heard the screams of 2 other members of my crew, and saw them safely huddled against the building. Before leaving the room, I drained all the water in the lines in the bathroom into containers, as I knew there would not be any water for awhile.

The restaurant had been vacated, the bartender handed me a bag of money as he was running out. I insisted he open the safe for me to put it away, and he then ran off to check his home and family. We were the only ones left in the hotel, so we gathered in the restaurant, and decided we might as well see what there was to eat, we did well as food it was in abundance at this point. We also found the beer still cold!

We then walked downtown a short distance, and it was only then the full realization of the extent of the damage hit us. The hotel had appeared undamaged (a crack in the lobby fireplace was the only damage). Native hospital was nearby, and we went there to see if they needed any volunteers. They asked us to stand by for a time, as they were trying to obtain permission to admit nonnatives. We waited a while, and were finally told the other hospital was able to handle all the injuries, so we went back to our empty hotel.

The aftershocks were the unnerving part. Even when I returned to San Francisco it was several days before I trusted myself driving, as the ground was still moving under me, and I had to continually be reassured it wasn’t another earthquake.

Posted in Dorothy Armstrong | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Tom SchworerI flew that weekend as the Navigator with the Alaska Air National Guard. Starting with the second flight on Saturday the 28th I took pictures with a small 35 MM camera.

At 5:30 PM I was on the second floor of the National Bank of Alaska (I worked there as a banker). I received activation and reported to Kulis AFB (Anchorage Int’l) … from there we flew in a C-123J to Elmendorf where we picked up soldiers as no word was received of conditions down on the gulf. All electric navigation and radio was down with bad weather. No camera on the first flight.

Tom’s Photo

Tom SchworerCosta MesaPosted in Tom Schworer | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Merry-Rae Brook DunnI was twelve years old when I was in the Alaskan earthquake. I was with other Girl Scouts selling Girl Scout Cookies at a grocery store when the quake happened. I remembered the Easter Lilies on the top of the counters above us falling down on us,

not a good sign. We clung to a floor to ceiling pole at the area we had been allocated to sell cookies. The sharp movement of the quake yanking us back and forth kept us from standing for very long.

I remember looking out into the parking lot of the store and seeing power poles swaying in the distance as I clung to that pole. The experience of the strong yanking is one that never leaves my memory after all these years. The smells of mustard and vinegar were pervasive throughout the store, and I will never forget that smell. All isles were too packed with goods to walk on. I remember people stumbling over the can goods frantic to get to the front of the store.

I was in the front of the store so I was able to get out easily with my friends. I remember my mother came for me. She was a nurse at the time and she knew she had to get back to work to help with the patients. My older brother was with his friends and we were to soon know the devastation he had witnessed. He had been jumping over crevasses as they opened and closed, turning the area he was visiting with his friends, into the worst damaged area of Turnigan. It felt like time had stopped, unable to process anything as my mind just could not take it all in.

My mother was able to get my brother and I home, we lived off a long road that ended on the Turnigan Arm, the side that was not near the water and thus not as damaged. Our home had not suffered any major damage, mostly food and the refrigerator contents on the floor, once again mustard smell, and a fine layer of toothpicks scattered all over the top of everything. My mother being a nurse and very organized got the place cleaned up, we checked the fireplace for damage and my bother built a fire. There were not lights or running water for the time being.

There was no shortage of aftershocks. As I was only twelve at the time and had not experience of earthquakes and the grownups around me were so preoccupied with basic survival they did not inform me that it was very common the experience aftershocks that would diminish over time. So as far as I could tell, I was sure the aftershock was going to last forever. I could also be that we were all in shock ourselves. My father was a radio and TV announcer at the time Nathan Brook, he worked at KENAI radio and TV. He worked in the downtown area of Anchorage, that area was quarantined due to so much damage.

He was stuck at work for a number of days but somehow he and my mother were able to communicate. He may have given her a message over the air as that was what the radio did at that time, was provide messaging and information to the area. My mother went into work that evening and my brother and I were left home alone in the dark. Sometime in the evening around nine o’clock there was a knock on outdoors telling us to evacuate as there was a Tsunami warning issued for our area and we were to head for high ground.

Our neighbors next to us had a large van and took my brother and me with them. Before we left we wrote a note for my parents telling where we had gone and that we had let our large Huskie off his lead as we could not take him with us. I was frightened again for my dog, and my whole family. I supposed I was in shock the whole day and months after before I felt that that experience diminished in my mind. The Tsunami did

not hit Anchorage as it was predicted and we were allowed to go home. My mother was home when we came back and was glad that no further harm had come to anyone.

My dog had left and not come back, we found much later on that someone had taken him. He was a beautiful and friendly dog, he would howl at night like wolf longing for its pack mates as they were only a few blocks away. So my parents didn’t miss him as much as I did, and life moved on. I knew really horrible things had happened, I had school mates that had died when they fell in a cravas that opened up and then closed on them, I was unable to process everything, I wanted it all to go away and get back to my normal life.

I remember the weeks that followed, we used coffee cans for out toilet, my mother collected those cans and now we knew why. The National Guard was called in to protect property from looting and also had set up an over the ground water supply. The aluminum pipes would freeze, and then my father would put his coat over his bathrobe put his boots on to go and hack at the frozen water with an axe. He was not a frontier kind of guy. There were the honey bucket guys that came around to collect sewage.

We got our drinking water from a neighbors well, my brother and I would pull a snow sled to the well and fill up large Gerry cans and then take them home where mom would put Clorox in them. We were in the middle of spring break up before the water was turned back on and it made it harder to get the water with a sled. With no school for weeks my girlfriend and I would play endless games of cribbage. I remember those times fondly.

Finally school started, my school had some damage but was repaired in time. My brother went to West Anchorage High and they lost a whole top floor of their school so they went half days with East Anchorage High, their rival school for the rest of the year. My father came home after a few days, life eventually got back to normal. Later that summer we took a car trip “outside” traveling the yet unpaved Alkan Highway to Seattle for my grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary.

The rest of the world thought we were all living it huts and scrounging for food and water, so my mom would take letters she had written to my grandparents and drag them through the mud, she had an occasional bout of whimsy in her otherwise business like demeanor. I remember that in some restaurant along the Alkan route that had a floor fan that was shaking the floor, we all got nervous, then looked at each other, and in that moment we knew that we were still in shock and would be for a very long time to come.

It would take years for me to stop reacting when someone would shake a chair I was sitting in or to not have flash backs of memory of the “big one” whenever there were any other earthquakes. I know live in Washington, in 2001 my mother passed away and brother was at my home north of Seattle, the area had an earthquake on the day he came in for the memorial service, we were north of the area and we still felt it, in that moment that we were feeling the waves of that earthquake we became those kids in Alaska on that Good Friday in 1964.

Merry-Rae (Brook) Dunn

Posted in Merry-Rae Brook Dunn | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Edward W. Jackson –   Elmendorf I was born June 1st, 1963, at Travis AFB. My father was transferred to Elmendorf AFB, where we lived for a time on base housing. Then my father rented a home nearby, where I and my parents lived. My father was a fighter pilot, relaxing in a break room at a hanger, when the shaking started. He and a buddy went to the doorway, in the nick of time. A huge floor to ceiling fridge fell over, just missing them both. Getting out of the hanger was hard to do, as they had to crawl out of it, to the outside. After the quake happened. One fighter plane that had come in that day, and was new, was nose into the ground. The shaking snapped the nose landing gear off. The huge hanger door was stuck where they were. For the whole buildings were warped. All the pilots were scrambled, and made ready to take off. At the time, pilots in those planes had the capability to engage Russia with a nuclear weapon that was launched from the plane. 45 minutes later, the men were told to stand down, that it was just an earthquake. My mother did not see my father for nine days, as those pilots were on alert at the base; in case there was an attack from Russia.

They say kids can’t remember anything when they are real young. I remember a bell on my toy train ringing out of the blue. I was sitting on the living room rug, with various toys, near a picture window. This train was meant for a child to sit on, and that bell rang and rang. I heard my mother screaming, and crying. She was in the kitchen, and she had one of those portable dishwashing machines that roll. Well, it went banging around, and ran over her foot to begin with. She hopped up on the counter, and that crazy machine was whipping around. I remember the blood from her cut big toe, and her crying, and later, the cold. We had lost our power. Lucky for us, neighbors took us in. Their apartment complex had lost its internal stairways, which had collapsed. People went up into their second floor apartments with ladders. This building built of concrete had to later torn down. But, being there that night, we had heat, but no water. I just remember the bell ringing, and the beautiful sun shining through that window, before the glass cracked, and my mother screaming.

Edward W. Jackson, of Missouri

Posted in Edward W. Jackson | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Vern W. Payne –   Elmendorf I was 21 years old and stationed at Elmendorf AFB and I had just completed the first year of a two-year tour. The shock over the loss of President John F. Kennedy was just beginning to subside and things were headed back towards normal. The Beatles descended on the music scene with a rush and long mop-head haircuts were becoming the rage with all the teenagers. I had just returned from a shopping trip to JC Penney where I’d picked up some new clothes. I had a date scheduled and I had hurried to the SAC/RAF mess hall to wolf down some dinner before returning to my barracks to put on those new clothes and make an evening of it. I had just sat down to eat when I felt a rumble in the floor. I knew immediately what it was, having been through a series of

earthquakes in Kern County in 1952. I told everybody not to worry because the disturbance would pass quickly. It didn’t pass quickly. The floor began to shake and pitch back and forth and after one violent upheaval, all the tables and chairs slid to one end of the mess hall and smashed against the wall. Time to get out.

The mess hall was full and 95% of the troops were trying to exit the building through the same doors they used to enter and the foot-traffic jam made escape all but impossible. I caught sight of the exit door by the serving line and noticed that almost nobody was going out that way. That route got me out of the building, down the steps and face-to-face with one of the most terrifying sights I’ve ever encountered. The ground was pitching and rolling like the ocean in a storm. Ice about two feet thick covered the ground and it was ripping like cloth every time the ground moved. I nearly got motion sickness standing on dry land which is a dubious claim to fame. I tried to get away from the mess hall building because it was slapping against a barracks and looked like it might come apart. Walking was impossible at best so I tried to steady myself by hanging on to an automobile door handle. I remember that vehicle to this day. It was a silver Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon. Hanging on to the door handle was a futile attempt because that station wagon was bouncing, at least two feet off the ground. Time to get away.

Power poles were wagging back and forth, transformers were falling to the ground and electrical lines were breaking all over the area. After what seemed like hours, the quake subsided and I made my way up the stairs to my room on the third floor. I remember the smell as I opened the door. Several brands of after-shave had toppled out of the medicine chest and had broken when they smashed against the concrete floor. The place had never smelled so good nor looked so bad.

Minutes turned to hours involved with cleanup and hauling out broken glass, mopping up the liquid mess and putting the room back in order. And during all this, there was our unit’s mission that had to be maintained. We were on the clock 24/7 and there was work to be done. I remember one man, a fellow named Don Jensen, from one of the southern California beach cities, made his way to our operational headquarters, set equipment back at vertical, cleaned the place up and continued his assignment – – – all by himself. He received a well-deserved award for that action.

Aftershocks during the next few weeks kept us all on edge and during the next year, I counted the days one at a time until I could get out of there. I think the happiest sight ever was Anchorage in my rear view mirror as I pulled out at one minute after midnight on March 15, 1965. It had nothing to do with the city or the people because everyone up there was great but the memory of that earthquake/tsunami stayed with me for years. Being an original member of the 8.7 (now 9.2) club is a moniker I wish I’d been able to do without.

Vern W. PayneBakersfield, California

Posted in Vern W. Payne | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Georgiana Jana Llaneza –   Anchorage When the Music Stopped Playing

I was 11-1/2 years old at the time the Great Alaskan earthquake struck. We lived in the basement unit at 1505 Orca Street in Anchorage. When the quake struck, Father was working, Mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen at the far end of the house, and the baby was in his high chair close to Mother. I was lying barefoot on Mother’s bed, singing a popular song with the radio. My brothers were outside playing. As usual, our parakeet, “Pretty Boy,” flitted about his cage chattering incessantly.

Unlike the older of my younger brothers, who never realized a quake hit, the noise of the earth’s rumbling and the crashing of dishes alerted me instantly that something was terribly awry. Seconds after the rumbling and violent shaking began, Mother screamed from the kitchen at one end of our basement unit, “Get Out! Get Outside!” The radio crashed to the floor, our dinner flew off the stove, chairs scooted and fell, books and crafts flew into our flight path. I can only imagine what “Pretty Boy” experienced in his cage suspended from a spring in the kitchen.

Spurred by the tone of Mother’s voice, I instantly scrambled off the bed and instantly lost my balance as my feet hit the wobbling tile. I tried to stand again, and fell after one or two steps. Mother came rushing through, clutching the baby, her face tight with tension, screaming even more hysterically, “Get Outside! Now! Run! Run!”

I scrambled and ran, but as the earth continued to shake violently, I once again fell, landing directly in Mother’s path. Mother hurtled over me with the baby in her arms, screaming in a voice raw with fear and despair, “Get Out! Get Out! Get Out!”

As I watched her disappear through the front doorway, suddenly a fierce emotion seized me, and I began to crawl furiously on all fours. By the time I reached the front doorway, the earth’s shaking had stopped. Mother was outside at the top of the stairwell with my 2 younger brothers, looking towards the dark basement, paralyzed with fear and trepidation, her eyes searching. I’ll never forget the look on her face when I finally appeared. If she could have, she would have flown down the stairwell to me, but since she had two other children to consider and one of them was in arms, she stood at the top of the stairs and called to me. Regaining my footing, I ran up the flight of stairs to her. Within an instant, mother was once again the stern mother hen, clucking orders, and instructing us to climb inside the Rambler and wait for her.

We obeyed. As we huddled together, cold and scared in the back of the Rambler, mother ran in search of my brother, Robert, screaming his name throughout the neighborhood as she quickly scoured the streets. Within a few minutes, Mother returned to the 3 of us, empty handed and dejected. Ordering us to stay, she ventured into the basement alone, and returned with our coats, the car keys, and her purse. When she noticed my bare feet, I recall her lecturing me on never going barefooted again and then she fell silent and put the Rambler into gear. As she drove to East Northern Lights Boulevard to fetch our father, dodging asphalt eruptions and asphalt cracks and valleys in the roadway, tears streamed down her face. We remained silent.

Gratefully, our basement unit was relatively undamaged and by nightfall, my brother Robert was returned home, unharmed. Our home became a refuge for three other families and a young man. From that point forward, life for the next several days took on a surrealistic feel.

Altogether, there were 23 of us in that basement refuge. Fortunately, one of the men, Curtis, worked at Fort Richardson, and through him, we had access to military water in large cardboard boxes containing flexible plastic containers with spouts. We supplemented that water with boiled snow treated with Clorox. It was the children’s job to collect snow in pots to melt so we would have water for washing and the toilet. I remember during the next few days that the radio ran day and night-playing only news-there was no time for music.

Early every morning for the next couple of weeks, my Father left together with the other men. I remember they would return long after dark, filthy and exhausted. They would sit down and eat voraciously while the womenfolk doted on them and then, one by one, they would turn into bed, murmuring about the sights they had seen that day. All I knew was that they were volunteering along with other men from the city to help clean up the mess, and to repair broken gas, water, and sewage lines throughout the city.

There were five women and it seems they never slept! If you wanted to find one, you could always find them gathered round the wooden picnic table in the kitchen, sleeping babies in their arms, murmuring together. When the women were not in the kitchen, they were caring for the children and men.

I was the oldest of all the children, so it was my responsibility to keep the younger ones out of the way of the adults, coordinate the many snow-gathering expeditions, and round up the kids for mealtime. By mid-week, our meals consisted of unremarkable government rations that I believe may have come from the military bases.

All the children (there were nine of us not including the two babies) shared a full-sized bed set up in the parlor area. It was comforting to sleep with company, even though we were arranged like so many clothespins, lined up neatly, side by side, our heads at opposite ends of the bed. Most of the children slept well, but I could not for each time I felt a tremor, I would sit up, ready to run again.

Eventually, life began to return to normal. We were all shepherded to one of the undamaged schools in the area to receive our typhoid shots. I remember watching my brother, Robert, the older of my younger brothers, stagger over to the glass windows after receiving his typhoid shot and then fainting to the floor. I thought it was rather comical at the time. In fact, I’m still chuckling at this moment, as I recall how his eyes rolled up into his head and he sank to the floor with an unceremonious sigh.

Eventually, the schools reopened. I attended Fairview Elementary. Twelve blocks away, the Denali school had been rendered unusable, so we shared our school by attending in shifts. Fairview started the day with the early morning shift and Denali took the late shift. During those days, classes and playground times were shortened. Long after I had gone home, Denali students were just beginning the school day.

Permission to play on the school grounds came only after the Denali students had gone home late in the evening. I remember how much my brothers and I loved to ice skate. After the Good Friday earthquake, we rarely had the opportunity to skate at the school playground. Father’s answer to our dilemma was to help us build our own ice rink in the backyard. Although crude, and full of bumps that could send you flying through the air, the rough rink generated many happy memories for the entire neighborhood until the spring thaw.

Interestingly, after the 9.2 earthquake, “Pretty Boy” never flew again, choosing instead to walk about his cage walls and floor or on the floors and tables of our home. If “Pretty Boy” wanted to get down, he jumped, or used drapes for ladders, but he never flew again.

Of course, after school started, everyone began trickling back to their own homes. The radio started playing music once again. Although it was nice to have my own bed back again, I missed having everyone nearby. During a disaster, there is something inexplicably comforting about being able to share in the company of another human being. There is yet an even more inexplicable comfort to experience when the music returns.

by Georgiana (Jana) Llaneza

Posted in Georgiana Jana Llaneza | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

David Kanzler – Elmendorf   AFB Elmendorf Air Force Base, adjacent to Anchorage, is the largest Air Force installation in Alaska and home of the Headquarters, Alaskan Command.I was 4 years old and living in the Cherry Hill area of Elmendorf Air Force Base. My father was away on a mission leaving my mother and their 5 children “home alone.” I was coming up the basement stairs when the quake hit and I remember falling down the stairs. The shaking was unbelievably violent but I also remember the sound of the quake. The noise the earthquake made is rarely mentioned, but I can vividly remember the loud rumble which sounded like a freight train at high speed. In fact I thought the cause of it all was a freight train coming out of the ground from below the apartment.

The kitchen was a mess with all of the jars of food and condiments broken on the floor. All of my brothers’ model airplanes had come down from their perches as well as books, figurines, etc. My brothers’ school, Government Hill Elementary was destroyed, but as noted was closed that day for Good Friday.

With no electricity or heat, that night we gathered with other families on our living room floor and slept in sleeping bags. It was a great adventure for a 4 year old, but tremors and fires in the fuel storage area nearby (above ground due to the permafrost – since buried) kept the adults worried for days.

I can still remember my friend Mary Jo and me pushing on the side of the apartment building later that summer and trying to get the building shaking again!

Posted in David Kanzler | 1 Comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Patrick M. Keulen – Fort   Richardson Well I remember it like it was yesterday. My dad was stationed at Fort Richardson. My dad, mom and two sisters were all sitting down to a Good Friday dinner a little after 5:00 p.m. Back then my mom would set the table with plates, cups and saucers and I remember hearing the cups start to make a tinkling sound and saw a really curious look on my mom’s face when all of a sudden it hit.

It was such a furious force not shaking but more of a rolling movement. I looked up to see the kitchen cabinet doors swing open and all the dishes falling out breaking on the floor and then saw our huge china hutch fall over. My dad and I started walking around the house, why I really don’t know, we were all in shock. My dad face was white as a ghost and his eyes were bulged out. There was a roaring sound I can still hear.

My mother who was 8 1/2 months pregnant with my youngest sister was crying hysterically and curled up in the fetal position in the corner of our living room with my two sisters who were also crying. My mom was begging us all to come to her because if we were going to die we would all die together. My mother a devout catholic thought it was the end of the world. That was the most courageous thing I ever witnessed in my entire life. Our priest Father Van Dyke came to our house that night and stayed on his knees until the morning praying the rosary. We were out of power and all I could see were his lips moving by candlelight.

In the days that followed the tremors were scarier than the quake. They seemed more violent. We went downtown Anchorage and saw all the wreckage, it was unbelievable. Our babysitter’s boyfriend was killed when a huge cement block from the J.C. Penny’s building crushed him.

I loved Alaska and still do. Living in Fort Richardson was so much fun, the military made it a great place for kids. It was by far the best time of my life. I can remember ice skating in the middle of Ft Rich and sledding and snowman and the forests. I still can recall a day when me and my friends built a huge three ball snowman and watched it disappear during a snowstorm. I also remember getting into trouble when my friends and I all stayed out late playing not knowing what time it was until the M.P.’s came to find us. It was after midnight but still light outside.

We stayed another two years and then eventually settled in California! I really laugh when my friends get freaked out with the 3.5’s here.

I never get scared during an earthquake not after that Alaskan whopper.

Posted in Patrick M. Keulen | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Michael W. Houck – Fort   Richardson I was 7 years old and living at the Fort Richardson Army base when the earthquake occurred. My father was an Air Force pilot and went skiing with some friends for the day at Mt. Aleska. My mother was in Colorado visiting her mother who had a stroke. My two younger sisters and I were at home with a baby sitter when the earthquake hit. Everything started shaking; dishes flew out of the kitchen cabinets and furniture was moving around the room. We had a large glass ball used to hold up fishing nets, displayed on our dining room table. It was shaking and moving towards the edge of the table. I went over and held it on the table to keep it from falling off. Our baby sitter held our china cabinet and kept it from falling over. It was the only china cabinet in the housing complex where we lived that did not fall over. By the time the earthquake ended all the furniture in our home was moved around the room or tipped over.

My dad said he was driving back from skiing and the road in front of him was waving like a flag and the telephone poles along the side of the road were whipping back and forth. He stopped the car until the earthquake stopped. When it was over he continued driving home and stopped at a liquor store along the way. He and his friends were the first ones in the store after the quake. The female clerk was in a mild state of shock and all the bottles of booze were broken on the floor. My dad said he had to wade through two inches of liquor to get to the beer coolers; he grabbed a six pack of canned beer and the clerk said he could have it.

We did not have telephone, water, and electric service for weeks. My mother had no way of knowing we were OK. The fire department came up the street with a water truck to deliver water. My dad cooked on the BBQ. I was not scared during the big earthquake but was frighten during the larger aftershocks. My mom made it home about a week after Easter; I had saved a big chocolate bunny that I got from the Easter Bunny, for her to see.

Posted in Michael W. Houck | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Janet Hill Irwin –   Elemendorf I too lived in Alaska on March 27th, 1964. My father was stationed at Elemendorf and we lived on Beech Street across from the Aurora Elementary school. My mother and my two brothers and my sister and I were all home and my father was on the way home in a car. When the quake started the dog had been uncomfortable for a few minutes. We tried to leave through the front door and it got stuck in the door jamb so we lay down on the floor and said probably three decats of the rosary while the floor rose and dropped and the noise was deafening.

After it was over my mother sent me down the street with a Valium for her friend that worked at the little corner store near our house. She had a feeling that the woman was going to need one. I was in 6th grade and terrified to have been sent out and about and I was sure it was not the last of the shaking. The one vivid thing that will never leave my memory was the smell. It was as if the entire planet burped and the smell was one of dirt and natural gas and oil and other unidentifiable odors. I’ve smelled things similar in my garden after tilling but not as pungent as 1964.

When my father got home from work we were already putting the contents of the cabinets that were now on the floor in boxes for the trash and my father began putting the things from the fridge out in the snow bank to keep the fresh.

We were leaving Alaska in less than a month and some of my mother’s treasures were in boxes already. The dishes in the dish washer were untouched. The person who was supposed to empty it that day didn’t get yelled at for neglecting their chores. We had visitors that evening. Families whose husbands worked with him came for the overnight as the men headed back to the F102 hangers. I slept with a three or four year old little girl in my lap that night while sitting on the couch. I bolted out the door several times with that child as I vowed I’d not be caught indoors again during an aftershock.

We all did wonder if the base pool cracked and whether the water drained out or not. My sister and I roamed before we left in some off limits area…we did it all the time…we took the drainage ditch between our housing and Cherry Hill and went to see if we could see large cracks in the planet and we did. There were boards and duct tape across the halls where the floors had cracked in school. We were not too happy to have to cross them on the way to music class.

My younger brother was supposed to make his first Communion that Saturday at the larger Chapel near the base theater but due to some damage we had to go the smaller chapel across the base and they made their first Communion on Easter Sunday and while the class of communicants were dressed in their blue suits and white dresses the rest of us wore whatever we wore. Church clothing wasn’t exactly the order of the day.

Three years ago I went back to Alaska with my husband for our 30th anniversary. I didn’t get to Anchorage but we will next time. I can tell you that as I boarded the first plane I had tears in my eyes. I remembered that fateful day and I also remembered those houses in Turnigan that slid to the sea and the demolished school on Government Hill that I passed to go and get my hair cut off base.

I’m sure that I will not be the only one sitting quietly at the appointed hour next week on the 45 anniversary an it being a Friday will make it to the day. I’ll probably play a CD I have with the Alaska state song on it and sing along and remember being young and facing death and cheating it.

Janet Hill…….now Irwin

Posted in Janet Hill Irwin | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Chris Turner –   Anchorage My mother & I (who had been in the US since 1959) were living with my sister & brother-in-law in Air Force Housing in Artic Boulevard, Anchorage. I was 18 and a senior at West Anchorage High School & I had just returned from a Rotary meeting for foreign students. I remember sitting with my nephew who was watching a television programme and my mother who was cooking the evening meal popped her head in and

asked my nephew to stop banging his feet on the floor, then realising that the noise was something else more serious !! It was an earthquake!

We didn’t know quite where to go but thought it might be advisable to stay inside and we all decided the best place was under the large dining table!

I remember looking out of the window at the small snow covered conifer trees that were whipping back & forth. There was a display cabinet in the dining area with many ornaments and the doors were flung open and lots of these ornaments were sent crashing to the floor. The evening meal (a stew) meanwhile was being bounced up & down on the stove and the contents of the saucepan were being deposited all over the kitchen. This was all accompanied by the violent shaking & loud rumbling noises and I think we all wondered whether we would survive. I suppose, in retrospect, the houses being made of wood allowed them to flex without breaking up.

It was a very frightening 3 minutes or so and when it was over we wondered where my brother-in-law had got to as he was (I believe) returning from Elmendorf Air Force base. He did eventually arrive home safely but told us that he was driving at the time of the quake & thought the car had got a flat tyre! He stopped and part of the road was breaking up in front of him.

There was a block of flats on the hill above us, which suffered quite a bit of damage and I have some pictures that I took later on of the area and Anchorage Main Street parts of which had collapsed down to the upper floors of the stores.

Because of the potential risk of a tidal wave (we were near Cook Inlet) we were evacuated to the Air Force base for a night or two & I remember staff at the base clearing up the broken spirit bottles. All were wearing masks because, I assume, the mixture of vapour would have been very overpowering.

As there were many smaller aftershocks occurring throughout the night it was terribly difficult to sleep but we counted ourselves lucky to have escaped unscathed.

After graduating I returned to the UK in July 1964 and I am now retired but I will never forget the experience. In fact I went to see the film ‘earthquake’ at the cinema here many years ago and the sound effects were quite unnerving and realistic taking me right back to that day on March 27th 1964 at 5:36 pm.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

William J. Ellis –   Anchorage I’ve just discovered your Great Alaskan earthquake web site and have a personal link to this event – not a recollection, but more of a question. Also, I Googled to see what might be online because I’m thinking of writing a story about the natural disaster story; it has been significant to me since high school; I was growing up when it happened and had been in the general area with my father one year earlier.

Anyway, my aunt, uncle, and cousin lived in Anchorage at the time about one block from the fissure that toppled Penney’s. She wrote dad about her experiences – she was also a favorite aunt of mine and accounts of her travel and documentary influenced my life then and to this day. All three have since deceased. Their daughter survives and I’m not sure I should share their name. My aunt did not run into the street with the others – something about saving dishes and grabbing a mirror in the bedroom to save it, leading her to throw herself on the bed with it and zang-zang-zang wildly around the room. Not much left of the nervous system for a few years, either.

According to her account, while she lay on the bed my uncle and cousin then fought their way to the Anchorage power source, where they shut down the city’s power supply to save further destruction. Gas lines had erupted, power lines were down, and who knows what explosions were possible. I’d like to know more about the extinguishing of the power supply. Anchorage was a 2nd or 3rd career for them so they were semi-retired, older, and there may be younger folks working for the city administration at the time who would still be around. Do you have any suggestions? Meantime, I will start the story with only my vivid memories and compiling other’s recollections, put it online, and watch it grow. Thank you! Warmly, C…

I was a senior at West Anchorage high school when this happened. We were out of school due to Good Friday and that saved a lot of lives. When it hit, we were at Gamble and North lights having just left the downtown area. The car felt like a rolling and rocking sensation. We watched power lines hitting each other and also a gas station on the corner lost its large glass window causing oil cans running all over the street. We had problems getting home as we lived in the Sand lake area and bridges were all damaged. What a mess inside our house. What a terrible night it was aftershocks no electricity, we rescued a lady next door with small children, her husband out in the bush. The next day we assessed the house and found minor damage. Our school was destroyed. We ended up going to our rival school East Anchorage and had to go split days. We graduated that year due to both gyms being damaged out of an Air Force Hanger. What a terrible ordeal, and I know every once in a while I will think about it and realize just what a piece of history that we all lived through.

Posted in William J. Ellis | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Lori Lynn –   Anchorage I was 9 years old in 1964. We had lived in Anchorage since 1959. My sister 4 years older than myself was home alone. My Dad worked at 5th and gamble and my Mom was working in the J.C.Penny’s building 2rd floor.

Me and my sister had just finished straighten up the mobile home (we lived at Idle Wheels park) and had opened a pack of cards to play “Go Fish” and the trailer started rocking and rolling. My sister knew we need to get out so she grabbed me and ran. The T.V. was swaying back and forth and she saved me from being hit by it, as we got out.

My dad worked 10 minutes away and it seems like he was at our trailer before the quake stopped. My sister and I were over at the neighbor’s trailer by then and I remember seeing inside their trailer and all the cupboards were open and everything

was on the floor. My Dad told us We had to go get my Mom at Penney’s. I remember being so scared that my Mom was dead. I don’t remember how we even got downtown, But after sitting in the car waiting for my Dad to find her, I was so never so happy to see anyone in my whole life.

My Mom was okay, She never did remember how she got out, but she had 2 kids with her that she helped out of the rubble. Our trailer wasn’t damaged much, so our friends whose apt. was damaged moved in with us. So there were 7 kids under 13 with 4 adults staying in a single wide mobile. We boiled snow with Clorox to drink and flush the toilet. My dad and his friend went out every day to help with whatever they could and we have some good pictures of the damages around town.

The after tremors at all times of the day and night really scared us. My Dad sent us “Outside” to Washington state to stay with family for 3 months to calm my Mothers nerves but We were back up there as soon as he let us. We were back and forth to Alaska for the next 10 years. My mom driving the Alcan Highway with my sister and me. They bought a house in Vancouver, WA So I had the choose to finish school in Washington and a year after I graduated I meet and later married a Man that was born in Palmer, AK. He was living in Seaside, Oregon in 1964 and was run out of town by the tsunami wave created by the Alaska earthquake.

My husband is now retired from the Air Force after serving 30 years. I was back in Anchorage in 1995 when my dad passed away.

Thank You for letting me tell you about my experience during the quake Only someone that was there really knows how I felt and how scary it was for a child of 9 years old

Posted in Lori Lynn | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Sandy Gunvalson Anderson – Chugiak   Account Chugiak is a community approximately 20 miles (12 km) northeast of Anchorage.I was 12 years old, living in Chugiak, at the time of the Good Friday earthquake. We lived in a 3-room log cabin about a quarter of a mile off Birchwood Loop North. My older brother was on his 2-week encampment with the National Guard. My mother and father were both home, as was I at the time of the earthquake. It was a very frightening experience and the longest 4 minutes I’ve ever experienced. I remember my mother grabbing me and we stood in the doorway of the cabin. I think my dad was ready to catch the TV. His one-ton truck bounced all over the yard, but interestingly enough, our wood pile stayed pretty much intact. The entire pile appeared to be rocking together, as if it were placed in a giant rocking chair. Damage to our house wasn’t great, however, we did lose our well shortly afterwards and a support beam under the cabin cracked.

The medicine cabinet emptied itself, and furniture shifted. Mother’s plants on the window sill all fell and water sloshed out of the pan we kept on the wood stove, so we had a lot of mud on the floor. The earthquake was even completely over yet, when our neighbors across the street and their children came over to our house. They, like us, were frightened. We apparently had only electric radios which did us no good without

electricity, so my father ran his truck and wired a speaker from the truck radio into the house. We went to bed that night with our clothes and boots on, so we could leave quickly in case we had to evacuate. As instructed on the radio, we also packed a bag with groceries for evacuation, mostly canned items, and discovered to our amusement much later, that we had not included a can opener. We eventually heard that the National Guardsmen were okay – that was great relief, although they were put on extended duty. My brother had to tromp through damaged homes in Turnagain By The Sea looking for bodies.

Nearly 40 years later (and in another state) I had an “earthquake flashback”. I was in a pharmacy which had antique pharmaceutical bottles on display. There was a demolition and construction project underway across the street. Some heavy equipment was rumbling and all those display bottles were vibrating and clinking. It felt and sounded like an earthquake. I had to leave.

Posted in Sandy Gunvalson Anderson | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Gregory Robinson –   Valdez I was 18 months old when the earthquake happened so I have no memories of that day. We lived in Valdez at that time. My dad was working down at the dock. Mom at the hospital. My sister and brother and I were at home with the babysitter. I was in a highchair next to the refrigerator, Lynne and Richard were playing hide-n-seek hiding behind the couch in the living room when everything began to rumble. I’m told I took a beating from the refrigerator and the wall. Lynne and Richard took the same kind of beating from the couch. The babysitter knew she had to get us all outside as the house was coming apart. She said it was shaking so violently that she had trouble getting to each of us and then getting us all to the front door of the house. The front door stairs and small patio were pulling away from the house as a fissure had formed between the two. The babysitter had to toss each of us across then she jumped, but in doing so fell and broke a few ribs because of the violent shaking.

Down at the docks my dad, Richard Robinson, was operating a forklift. He and several men from town were helping unload the ships that were docked there. That area was destroyed by the earthquake and tsunamis that hit the area. He was one of the 32 people killed in Valdez. His body was never found. We believe he went down with the underwater landslide. Watch “Alaska: Thought the Earth Be Moved. The Alaskan earthquake” to see actual earthquake footage as it append in Valdez.

Mom was working at the hospital, the floors dropped and water and sewage started flooding the floors. She says in the confusion her first thought were to keep the bed sheets from getting dirty. Once she got her wits about her she knew she had to find us kids. Once we were located she headed for the docks but was met by grandpa saying not to go down there as Richard was gone.

Word soon got around that we needed to get out of town and to higher ground, which we did.

Later we were evacuated to Fairbanks. From there we went to Salt Lake City, Utah to be with family. (15 years later Lynne was also killed on Good Friday)

Posted in Gregory Robinson | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Monica Maack Tiller – Kodiak Naval   Base I was nine years old and my dad was a Chief Petty Officer stationed at the Naval Base on Kodiak Island. It was Good Friday, and we had just finished eating dinner. I remember my dad sitting in his easy chair reading the newspaper while my mom finished putting away the dishes, when the first tremor started. I had just walked into the living room and stopped dead in my tracks. My dad looked up at me and I looked at him when the big tremor came. I just stood there watching him as he grabbed onto the floor lamp next to him and my mom was yelling from the kitchen, trying to hold the cabinets shut so that the dishes wouldn’t fall out. I don’t remember how long the quake lasted, probably a minute, but it seemed like forever. Once it stopped, dad jumped up and turned on the television to see what was being reported.

My next recollection was that we were soon packing belongings and moving to stay with the families who lived on higher ground because there was the threat of tidal waves. We stayed the night with a family we didn’t know (as did many other families that night), the children sleeping while the parents stayed up all night gleaning news and waiting to see if we would have subsequent quakes or tidal waves.

Luckily, our housing area did not suffer any damage from the quake or from the tidal wave, but parts of the Base did get hit with the tidal wave and downtown Kodiak was severely damaged by the tidal wave, washing boats ashore into the township.

As I was still a child, the experience was one of adventure for me. The day after the major quake (several smaller quakes would follow in the weeks to come), those whose homes we shared the night before had to come down to stay with us as their power went out and we had big gas furnaces which we used to cook small meals on, as well as grills and hibachi pots. As it was Easter, my mom had fortunately already boiled the Easter eggs, so the children decorated the eggs with crayons. Some of the people on the Base put together an Easter party for all the kids with baskets and stuffed animals for each of us. Yet even with these special treats, the gravity of the situation was all around us as we saw the huge cracks left in the roads and Base runway, and the high water lines on the buildings where the tidal wave came ashore. The memory of those days will always be with me.

Monica Maack TillerWichita, Kansas

Posted in Monica Maack Tiller | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Glenna Silvan – Palmer and   Wasilla

I am sending what I remember from the great quake. I lived between Palmer and Wasilla on a farm. There were 7 children but my two older sisters had grown and gone. I was 12 years old. My father had just gotten home from work. He worked for the ‘Road Commission’ which had the responsibility to keep all the roads in and around Palmer clear of snow and ice. Often he would work through the night. My mother was a registered nurse.

We were all getting ready to head to a church potluck, when it began. Just before the quake began I was on my way to the outdoor clothesline. The days had begun to get longer and dusk was just starting. It was all of a sudden when all the animals (we raised cows, had dogs, and cats galore) and birds were silent. The sky seemed to intensify and become darker in a single moment. I made my way back into the house with the frozen solid shirt when the quake first began.

As things started flying from our open shelves, my father told us all to get outside. We had 180 acres, with a 13 acre field in front of our house. We had an old trailer that was in our front area also. The cleared pasture was surrounded by very tall pine trees, upward of 80 feet and more. As we crowded out of the house trying to stand in a small circle, we kept falling. The trailer pitched to and fro like a child on a trampoline, and the trees surrounding the property were stooping to the ground as the earth heaved and rolled in waves.

We looked to our father, who was standing in the doorway of our home, unable to stand even with both shoulders and arms braced against the framing. The noise was incredible. The bouncing trailer, creeks and groans from our frame built home, and odd sounds from our car as it lurched and rocked back and forth, along with a deep under earth roar.

When the seemingly eternal quake ended, we surveyed the damage. The trees were back upright in the forest. Some of the larger field equipment had shifted several feet in the machinery park. We had a concrete floor in our milking barn, and a crack had formed right under the bulk tank that held the dairies milk each day. We dropped a stone and never heard it hit anything. There were cracks in the stucco covered home, and the root cellar that was built into a hill had disgorged the years food supply off its shelves onto the middle of the floor. There was a 3 foot high pile of home canned salmon, green beans, berries, stew and canned caribou and moose meat, and every kind of homemade jam imaginable.

Every year my mother would painstakingly raise a quarter acre garden and we would spend the spring and fall catching salmon, and canning almost everything. The exceptions would be put into the freezer where we had the seasons end of home grown strawberries, raspberries and green peas along with an array of frozen game that our father had shot that year.

The dishes in our cupboards were all on our floor, the food in piles on top of the dishes, except for the flour and sugar which occupied large barrels in 200 lb quantities.

Our property edged on a quiet lake, surrounded by rolling meadows. This time of year the ice was about 4 to 5 feet thick. We would ice skate and drive our truck on it and

make donuts for fun. The ice in the center of the lake had ruptured and an abstract trophy-like pile of ice reached 12 feet or more, with mud from the lake bottom covering it like a hot fudge sundae.

The livestock were standing in a circle, away from the trees and near a pasture. It was as if they had sensed what was coming, or heard the groan deep beneath the earth that we could not hear. They had congregated and stayed there for several minutes after. They would be put in their stantions with fresh straw that evening, but the milk production dropped dramatically for a few days. The storage of our hay, in the barn had been violently pitched as if a mad man had been there, with no order in sight, everything jumbled together. The hay for the livestock was mixed in with broken bales of straw used for bedding the animals. It took a long time to right the mess.

We never made it to the church potluck. My father had to report to his work as soon as he could. The snow would still fall, and the quake had made many roads impassable. He was gone for what seemed like days, and when he returned he gave us reports of horrendous scenes of devastation to property, roads and houses. Still when we made it to church a week and a few days later, a list was hung in the foyer. On one side the heading was We Need and the other side

Heading was We Have. Under the ‘we need’ side there were no names. Under the we have side, there was list upon list of items members were willing to share. Everyone was just happy to be alive. But our small community banded together and things that needed to be rebuilt were rebuilt, and things that needed to be torn down, were torn down. Bales of hay were sorted and stacked in barns across the Matanuska Valley, and life continued.

The continued aftershocks would shake and rattle nerves every time they happened. And to this day when I am involved in an earthquake, small or large, I am not able to stand up, and end up in a fetal position crying. I even went to a mental therapist and told him when we were living in Seattle and had a 5 quake, what my reaction was. He said it was normal and while you can learn to overcome other fears, like flying or swimming, it would be pretty hard to conjure up an earthquake for a therapy session. My sister who is a few years younger and lives near me now tells me her reaction is the same.

We didn’t remain in Alaska long after the quake. We moved a little over a year later to Hawaii. My father sold his farm, cattle, equipment and buildings for $18,000, a pittance even then. I have not been back.

We are supposed to have a “Big One” here anytime. I hate thinking about it.

Glenna Silvan- Magna UT

Posted in Glenna Silvan | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Clark H. JillsonI was 18 and a resident of Fairbanks and had never been to Anchorage before, but was there attending the Community College taking a two month class in surveying and soils testing. I was staying in a boarding house on K Street that was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Bill Langford. Classes were over for the day and the rest of the boarders and I were just sitting down for supper, about to enjoy the meal that “Mother” [as we called her] had prepared for us. Suddenly there was a tremor that lasted only a few seconds.

One of the boarders said casually, “Hmm, earthquake.” Then it really hit with all it’s might. Everything was rocking and rolling. The cupboards in the kitchen all emptied out all over the place. Some of the stuff landed in a huge bowl of gravy that mother was preparing, slashing it all over her. I yelled out, “Let’s get out of here!” It was hard to stand but we all made it out of the back door that was only a few feet away. I remember one guy stumbled over to a nearby picket fence and managed to hold on to it. I grabbed the corner of the house and was holding on to that.

Looking down I saw the earth open and then close right between my feet. Looking up I saw the brick chimney swaying back and forth. I figured I was about to get it right on my head. Oddly enough it held together. Looking across the street I saw huge trees swaying from side to side. How they didn’t snap I will never know. The sound generated sounded to me like I was standing next to a railroad track with a train roaring past with the sound of continually breaking glass in the background. The air was full of the odor of natural gas. And then it was over.

A young girl of about 15 suddenly was running down our driveway screaming at the top of her lungs. My landlord’s son grabbed her as she ran by him, and just in time too for the whole backyard and rear portion of the house dropped down about 10 ft. From somewhere down the street I heard a man yelling, “Don’t light any matches!”We all gathered together and found that nobody had been hurt. I went down to the end of K St. and looked out over Cook Inlet. Where earlier it had been frozen over solid the ice was now pulverized and the water level had dropped dramatically. Coming back up K St. I stopped at the intersection of 4th Ave. to gaze downtown. Just then an Anchorage policeman pulled up and asked if I would direct traffic at that corner. I told him I would and he left saying, “Don’t let anyone downtown!” I stayed there for a few hours. Traffic was almost nonexistent.

One man did pull up to me and said he had to get downtown. I told him that the police wanted nobody to go down there. He then told me that he was going through anyhow because his mother was down there. I let him pass without any argument.

Later as the sun was going down I remember looking downtown as big flakes of snow started to slowly fall. It was very quiet. I thought to myself [being a child of the Cold War] that this is how it would be after a nuclear attack. We all stayed in the house that night even though part of it was gone. My alarm clock had fallen off of the night stand beside my bed and was broken. It was the only thing I lost to the earthquake, and I have it to this day.

The next day we were told that we had to evacuate the house. The Langfords were fortunate enough to find a place where all of us tenants could stay together. I stayed

there with them until my class was completed in May. I went home to Fairbanks and never saw any of them again. A few years later I moved to New York State. I understand that the area where the boarding house once stood is now a parking lot. These memories are as vivid today as they were then. I certainly will never forget.

Posted in Clark H. Jillson | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Ron WatersMy Mom and Dad were very hard workers. Both worked more than one job. And being African American in Alaska, there were only two places where the adults all hung out. The original place was called the Flats; there were two restaurant bars and a small store. They all got together on Fri, Sat and Sun after church. Sometimes they would take us kids to Big Lake. These men were all from Texas or back east and they were here to make money so they could move back to Los Angeles or somewhere where they could start a life. And in some cases they were going to stay and work on the Pipe line that was coming.

The second place was opened by one of the richest black guys we knew. He was a friend of my dads as my dad was a jack of all trades. And, he had done some construction work and painting for him. His name was Mr. Ford as I remember and he built what would be called a strip mall today. It had a soul food restaurant, barber shop, beauty salon, pool hall and a night club. As they say, the place was jumping. The Fords would invite me, my baby sister Debbie, Mom and Dad over for dinner. My mom and dad had many friends that I remember. They have almost all passed away. They were hard working and hard partying folks who loved each other and shared everything.

There are a million stories I could tell. My father was a jack of all trades, superintendent of the Presbyterian hospital, janitorial contracts with Elmendorf and Fort Richardson. On weekends he took on jobs like cleaning up factory buildings and stripping floors and such. That is where I came in. I did all the work. He would show me how and watch me do all of the work. I would get a pancake breakfast at the soul food restaurant or a Steak and Egg breakfast at one of the bars in the flats. We lived at 1427 Orca in a prefab home with a full basement.

My father and I made up the basement into a nightclub and on Fridays he would have his own parties with a blues band, gumbo or chili, poker and numbers in the back. I would serve drinks for tips. My Mom and Dad where known for their hospitality. I remember many visits from friends in need. That day was like any other day. This day was the day we would prep the yard to grow grass. In Alaska grass dies during winter, but my dad insisted on planting Grass every year. So, two of my friends and I were in the process of cleaning the yard of rocks and raking to get it ready for seeds. We finished about 5:30 and went inside to watch Fireball XL5.

We were all lying across my mom’s bed watching Fireball XL5 coming on when it hit. My friend Andre said, it is an earthquake. I had no clue what that meant. All I knew was the entire world was shaking violently. We fell to the floor and started towards the living room. My father was yelling for us to get under the kitchen table as he was holding my sister in the front door frame. After about two minutes of really violent shaking, it

started to rock back and forth very hard. I couldn’t stay under the table. I had to see. You could see cars rolling in the street. The street opened up a couple of times. The telephone poles were swaying back and forth.

As scary as that sounds we seemed to get used to it and we just held on until it finally stopped. I remember the next events very well. The most important one was what my father said. He said I have to leave you guys and head to the hospital. It must be a mess over there. My sister and I were in shock. From time to time we had people stay with us until they could get back on their feet. My mom and dad were known for that. We had the prettiest nurse staying with us. I can’t remember her name. Her boyfriend was a black doctor in the strategic air command. I remember people used to say. Anyway, she said her boyfriend would be coming to see about her. He did and took her and my sister up to a SAC military site. My father told me to leave with Andre and my other friend Bruce. Someone would come for me.

We ran from my house looking at the devastation as we ran. We ran past Fairview Elementary and only chairs had fallen. We were hoping to be out of school for a while. No such luck, the school was good to go. We ran to Andre’s house where his mother was still freaking out. She was so worried about Andre and Bruce my other friend. There were like 20 people there and all of them with a scared look in their face. A bright orange light shot through the sky right after dark and some of them screamed. A few minutes later a long black Lincoln pulled up. A large man in a heavy overcoat came to the door and asked for me. I remembered him. He was the henchman of one of my father’s poker friends. He asked for me and never spoke another word. I got in the back of the Lincoln and he took me home. He drove me home which was like three blocks.

When I went in, my dad had come back and set-up a generator, but he had to leave right after that. My mom was sitting there with a small light, a bunch of bottles of booze and Nat king Cole playing on the turntable. She said, are you hungry? I said no mama. Right then my dad showed up and took me with him back to the hospital. The hospital had dropped four feet straight down. We had a makeshift flashing light atop the car. When we got to the edge of town they had military guards set-up and the waived him through. We went to the hospital. All of the patients were gone. Now, there were only soldiers sitting around.

I went down to the cafeteria as that was my favorite place when visiting my dad’s job. It was destroyed and there was no way I was getting anything to eat that night… After those events I remember, the neighborhood fathers guarding the water, military rations out of the can. Going on double shift with Denali and selling newspapers in downtown Anchorage. I was out of school at noon every day. I was able to save up live 3-5 dollars a day selling newspapers in downtown Anchorage as my friend and I were the first kids in downtown everyday with new papers. I owned the entire Mattel fanner 50 gun set. I’m writing because the girl who wrote when the Music Stopped was my neighbor. We lived at 1427 Orca and we all went to school together. Fairview Elementary was one block down the street.

I was 11 ½ as well. Her brother and I were best of friends. Finding her story was like being back there in 1964. My father worked 48 straight hours and was written up in a small article in the newspaper. He was being praised for getting to the hospital and helping to get all of the patients moved to the other nearby hospital We moved to

Southern California after that ( right in the middle of the Watts Riots) and I have worked in Information Systems ever since. And of course Disaster Recovery has always been my favorite work.

I even worked as a project manager for an outsource firm which basically does Disaster Recovery as a method to transition entire Data Centers. I moved the Rockwell Space Division Data Center which houses the as built shuttle manual for each shuttle flight. When John Glenn came to Anchorage after his historic flight I was the kid who led the rest of the kids into the street to shake his hand.

Posted in Ron Waters | Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Sandra Mitchell Adams – Fort   Richardson My dad was stationed at Fort Richardson. We lived across from ball fields and Boy Scout and Girl Scout huts. I remember the manmade ice skating rinks. I also remember every minute of the Alaska earthquake. It was supper time. My dad had the rank for that set of quarters. A lot of the people in that bldg. came to our basement for shelter. Food came out of cabinet, fish out of fish bowl. Streets with cracks. Tops of bldg’s downtown even with streets. I don’t know which was worse, the quake, or tremors after, for so long.

Posted in Sandra Mitchell Adams | 1 Comment

Search

Recent Posts Rocky Plotnick Patrick Hames Eric W. Clark William Ziesemer James Boyd Midlothian

Archives March 2014 June 2013 May 2013 March 2013 February 2013

Categories

Anne B. Royster Bill Woosley Clark H. Jillson Dave Rice David Kanzler Dorothy Armstrong Edward W. Jackson Eric W. Clark Fred Price Georgiana Jana Llaneza Glenna Silvan Gregory Robinson Jacob Drake James Boyd Midlothian Janet Hill Irwin John & Pat Steinke Kathleen Wright Ken Zeber Kenny Renew Lori Lynn Melody Gentry Barlow Merry-Rae Brook Dunn Michael W. Houck Monica Maack Tiller Patrick Hames Patrick M. Keulen Patrick Sanford Paul Heilman Peg Penny Pete J. Peter Robert Bucari Robert Williams Rocky Plotnick Ron Waters

Sandra Mitchell Adams Sandy Gunvalson Anderson Sue Walcott Susan Erlwein Davis Teresa Lerew Theresa McLean Timothy S. Osborn Tom Burt Tom Mealer Tom Schworer Uncategorized Vern W. Payne William J. Ellis

Meta Register Log in Entries  RSS Comments  RSS WordPress.com

1964 Alaskan Earthquake – Personal AccountsCreate a free website or blog at WordPress.com. The Misty Lake Theme.

Follow

Follow “1964 Alaskan Earthquake - Personal Accounts”

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Build a website with WordPress.com

Sign me up