Anchorage – Travels with Billie

Random Tales from the Earthquake

The woman who led our volunteer organization for servicemen was driving in downtown Anchorage. When the shaking started she pulled to the curb and stayed in the car. There was a man on the sidewalk next to her holding on to a pole with a sign stating “No Stopping or Standing”. After it was over they all just stared in shock, looking at each other. Then he looked up at the sign and said, “Well, I wasn’t really standing, you know.”

A local Anchorage store put a sign on their door that said, “Closed due to a shakeup in management.”

My mother had a friend who was a bartender in one of the bars that was part of the area downtown that sank 20 feet or so. He said there was a patron sitting at the bar who never moved from his barstool through the whole quake. After it was over, he proudly held up his glass and said, “I didn’t spill a drop!”

I was senior at West Anchorage High School, and the second floor of the school collapsed during the quake. We finished the year doing split shifts at East High. However, our graduation announcements, ordered months before, still held a drawing of the school. I sent them out to family and friends with a note telling everyone it was just the latest “Earthquake Joke.” West High is still there, but it’s only one story now. Although the main stairway still exists; it just doesn’t go anywhere.

Our senior prom was delayed, and we ended up having it at Ft. Richardson a week or two later than planned. And graduation, instead of taking place in the West High auditorium, was held in an airplane hanger on Elmendorf Air Force Base. It was an experience to remember!

While greatly damaged, Anchorage was by no means the hardest hit. Valdez was completely destroyed, with a large part of the town sinking into the sea. The town was relocated four miles away, where today it is the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline. Seward was also hard hit, first by a tsunami, and then fires from damaged fuel storage tanks near the docks. It was cut off for several days, since the Seward Highway and the railroad were impassible. Seward is situated on Resurrection Bay, wedged between the sea and the mountains, with only the one way in and out.

I got a first-hand report from a schoolmate, who had gone to Seward for the Easter break to stay with her mother, who worked there. She told me that after the shaking stopped she started to run to where her mother worked, but she was stopped by a man who told her they needed to go up the mountain. He pointed to the sea, which had emptied out a good portion of the bay. He knew what she didn’t: that a tidal wave was coming. Seward got not just one wave, but several. They ended up spending the night on the side of the mountain, along with many others. It was cold, so he gave her his jacket. When she told me her story, she said she never found out who the man was, but she still had his jacket. Oh, and her Mom was OK. She was also on the mountain, but in a different area.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, the people of Alaska started taking stock and figuring out what to do next. A house blew up due to a gas leak, so we were told to move out until the utility could get to each home to check for leaks. I couch surfed for the next couple of weeks at a friend’s house, while my mother decamped to another friend. I headed to the YMCA to volunteer and was immediately put to work as a gofer.

The day after the earthquake, the military came to our neighborhood with a water truck and we all lined up for fresh water. My mother owned a restaurant so we weren’t short of food, but I did end up standing in line at the grocery store the following Friday (I think it was Piggly Wiggly) for canned goods. They were letting a few people at a time go in to buy limited amounts. I could peek through the doorway and see that shoppers were navigating through aisles with groceries still scattered here and there. They were selecting goods from the floor as well as the shelves. My interest in canned goods ended when we had a strong aftershock and I decided there was no way I was going into that building.

Also during that week I stood in line for hours waiting to call my grandparents to assure them that we were OK. Again, the military had set up a telephone bank so we could contact our families. One call per family.

For weeks after, I would wake in the middle of the night, knowing another shock was on the way. I would hear it coming, like a train approaching, and then the closet doors would start to shake. Everything would rumble, then I would hear it receding. Years later I told my geology professor the story of my experiences, and he was thrilled that I was the first person he had heard first hand describe the first set of waves (alpha waves move faster but are smoother) that precede an earthquake. That was why so many of us would wake in the night just BEFORE an aftershock started. Also why animals and birds seemed to anticipate an earthquake and start barking or take flight.