Among other things: Rockin' and shakin', Alaska style

It doesn’t seem like 50 years ago, but it was – Good Friday afternoon, March 24, in the Anchorage area of Alaska. Several Flathead and Mission Valley people were living in Anchorage, Wasilla, Kodiak Island, Valdez and Seward. Many of them wrote letters to relatives and friends in Montana describing their experiences. We reported excerpts in the Flathead Courier.

Carol and John Pastos, were teachers at Elmendorf Air Force Base at Anchorage, Carol, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Abe Dubay, wrote perhaps the most vivid descriptions that we read. With school closed for the Easter weekend, Carol was in downtown Anchorage with the 9.2 quake occurred.

Her husband and their two boys remained at the air base while Carol went to buy groceries and some Easter things. After having a cup of coffee in a coffee shop, she stopped in a shop to have her eye glasses adjusted. “The old fellow fidgeted around so long, he got on my nerves but I waited patiently. When he got through I was mad because I was dizzy and thought he had them wrong. Grudgingly. I gave him a dollar and stepped out.”

Just a block down was another shop where she got the glasses adjusted again. She was told that the first adjustment was wrong. After walking just another block, Carol felt dizzy again and figured it was the glasses again. It was 5:30 p.m.

“I was two boys coming toward me sidestepping, then I realized … I grabbed the big bank buillding’s cement wall and hung on for dear life. I didn’t know what to do – it shook and shook I kept looking to see what might fall on me, as I watched cars rocking on the street in front, the cement lamp post three to four feet, people grabbing parking meters. Across the street the building I’d just passed had all its windows fall, crashing out on the street. Cars in front made a most terrible sound.

“I kept begging, ‘Oh, dear God, please stop it!’

”Nearly all windows were broken, doors twisted, cracks in big strong buildings. I was alone, I didn’t know what to do. I was sick to my stomach with fright. I began walking down 4th Ave. The farther I walked, to worse it got.”

The left side of the street for three or four blocks had sunk into a fault 30 feet deep with cars and buildings crushed and falling down. Some just dropped in.

“Then I saw the flower shop where I might have been, nearly sunk and crushed! As I turned the corner I gasped at the sight of the J.C. Penney building – such and awesome sight – material still falling, smoking heaps of rubble in the front, cars crushed by slabs of cement and the whole front and side of first through the sixth floors falling into the next floor, stacks of boxes torn open and exposed. I was almost there. I wondered how many persons must be trapped, crushed or dead. Luckily, the back end of the store wasn’t too bad and many escaped that way. Sirens were screaming and traffic was stopped because of huge crevasses and upheavals in the streets.”

Carol’s car was OK. She wondered how her husband John had fared. “When I finally stopped shaking enough I started the car and tried to get to Elmendorf. It was hopeless, so I decided if John was OK, I could do nothing, and he’d look for me at home.”

She picked up Jerry and Yvonne and as they were ready to go, Paul and Mary came by and they followed each other home. When they arrived Carol said that the Pastos house was the only one in the neighborhood with the fireplace still standing. We found neighbors inside who had started a fire to keep the little ones warm…

“With about 15 kids and 15 adults here, it was busy. I got snow melting and coffee making in the fireplace and made sandwiches. About an hour and a half later, John arrived. He’d had to drive all the way around the air base to get here. He was sick with worry about my being shopping when the quake hit. All along I felt safe in my heart that he’d been all right. What a reunion! All my philosophies of enjoying life together each day to the fullest couldn’t have been more true.”

Meanwhile at Wasilla

Mr. and Mrs. Jim Knutson were living in Wasilla, about 25 miles across Cook Inlet from Anchorage. Mrs. Knutson, the former Lori Bailey, wrote that the quake was the “most terrible experience” she’d ever known. Their basement home creaked and groaned like a frame house. Family members ran outside and could hardly stand up. Trees were whipping as they would in a high wind and they could hear a horrible rumble toward the mountains. The temblor lasted about five or six minutes but the Knutsons said they thought it would never stop.

Seward heavily damaged

Tom Hitchcock and George Sullivan had gone to Hope, near Seward, for the weekend. Tom’s car got caught in the tide and he had to jump from his car and swim and hurt his knee badly. They were flown back to Anchorage by helicopter.

At Seward, crab boats were said to be “strewn up on shore like crackers, and docks, all boats and the railroad completely wrecked.”

Valdez oil tank farm burns

Valdez residents were evacuated as the quake and liquefaction caused the Union Oil Co. oil tank farm fire which spread to the Port Valdez waterfront and destroyed docks and other structures. The town of Valdez was relocated.

Tsunami strikes Kodiak

Kodiak Island was slammed by 30 ft.to 50 ft. high tsunami waves that washed over many small villages and killed several persons. The radio operator at the Kodiak village of Kaguyak managed to alert several communities of the approaching waves and saved many lives. Kodiak city recorded 30 ft. waves.

And here at home

Coincidentally, a swarm of light but noticeable earthquakes got the attention of Polson area residents a few days before and after the big shake in Alaska.