Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami, 1964

1964 in Anchorage, Alaska, earthquake and resulting tsunami without warning on Good Friday March 27.

It was a quiet spring day in Anchorage, a holiday. The temperatures are mild-to-date with a moderate amount of snow on the ground. The children had a day off from school, and the customer traffic was light in downtown shops. Many residents were preparing or enjoying dinner at home. At 5:36 an earthquake, the earth began to tremble and the earth belowSouthern Alaska waves for the next four minutes.

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Parents and children slipped, stumbled and fell to the transfer plans in a panic trying to escape to break open the windows. Two-inch crack in the ground in many places. Rough roads and split Split and Fourth Avenue in downtown Anchorage and fell 10 meters or more. The Government Hill Elementary School rotated, moved and became useless in an instant. The outer wall of JC PenneyBuildings collapsed on the road. liquefied in the Turnagain residential floor like quicksand, slid away, and up to 75 or more dwellings swallowed.

The 4 minutes of the earthquake energy is about 10 million times the force of a nuclear bomb. The mass of earth and ocean absorbs most of force but man-made structures in the area could not absorb the rest of the force without suffering massive damage. total damage was estimated at $ 500Million €.

Anchorage was a gas mains and water stopped suddenly paralyzed. Residents resort to melting snow for water waiting for repairs. Four days later, students returned to schools as life in Anchorage began to recover.

The earthquake

The center of the earthquake, Alaska, was about 75 miles east of Anchorage and about 55 miles west of Valdez. It 'started 14-16 miles deep in the crust, a relatively shallow depth in the PacificPlate dives beneath the North American plate. The huge subduction zone is located at the northern end of the Ring of Fire, a semicircle of volcanic and earthquake activity that defines the periphery of the 'Pacific Ocean.

The fault of the earthquake, the more relaxed the pressure that the cause of the earthquake on Good Friday, 750 miles from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to Valdez. The Pacific plate that day moved to the 25 to 30 meters to the north, diving under the North American plate.The grinding of two tectonic plates of the massive earthquake in Alaska and measured 8.4 on the Richter scale. In later years, was the Alaska earthquake measuring up to 9.2 MW on the moment magnitude, scale as the Richter scale was intended to update inaccurate in measuring very large earthquakes above 8.0. Within a day after the first 11 earthquake tremors of 6.0 or more than the population already nervous shock. In fact, aftershocks continued for almost aYear.

The earthquake caused the ground to move upwards by up to 25 feet in different islands and Alaska was almost 3 meters to the top of the city of Valdez. In other areas, the ground moved down to 9 feet, for example, in the city of Portage.

The Alaska Good Friday earthquake was the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America. It 'was the second strongest ever recorded worldwide has exceeded the power of the 9.5 earthquake in Chile on 22 May 1960 MW.The recent 26th December 2004 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra measured 9.0 Mw The deadly earthquake occurred in Shensi Province, China, in 1556, where more than 830,000 people lost their lives.

Tsunami

Tsunami is a Japanese word for meaning "harbor wave," a reference to the fact that the wave has become the threat and the destructive force only significantly as it approaches the shore.

During the 1964 Alaska earthquake, the North American plate released upwardMoving a large amount of sea water and has caused a seismic wave, a tsunami travel outward. The wave travels at about 450 mph in the deep ocean in a long wave of almost imperceptible height.

As adopted by the tsunami on the continental shelf and entered the bank reduced its length, reduced his speed and height increased as the volume of mass and weight of the water ready to share their incredible energy to everything in its path.

On the plateValdez input wave has reached a maximum height of almost 200 meters. Moreover, the old town of Valdez, took a 30-foot wall of water and demolished all the structures. Twenty-eight people died in Valdez, when the tsunami crashed ashore. Valdez was then built to a higher level and further back from the coast.

In Seward, Alaska, the earthquake has caused to slide part of the bay. The slide caused a local tsunami that devastated the port of Seward and the center, bothwere then reconstructed. Twelve residents perished in Seward.

The town of Portage was leveled by his own local tsunami and never moved or rebuilt. Another local tsunami in the small port of Whittier, killing 12 people.

The destruction

The original tsunami traveled about 8,400 miles. It caused damage in Hawaii and along the coasts of Oregon and California. A proposal for a 20 Foot Wave Crescent City, California, killing 10 people. The tsunami wasresponsible for the deaths of 16 people in Oregon and California.

The tsunami killed 122 people in three states. In comparison, the earthquake resulted in 9 deaths.

E 'was more than 40 years after the earthquake and tsunami in Alaska. Meanwhile, building materials and construction methods were performed to create structures that can survive strong earthquakes. Also in the meantime, population growth in vulnerable regions of Alaskaenormous.

Small earthquakes along the subduction zone in Alaska and other fault zones occur every day, probably to relieve the internal pressure, otherwise you would have another earthquake.

However, no one knows for sure when, where and if another big earthquake in Alaska and devastating attack.

Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami, 1964