Liquified soil? Tectonic plates? On Good Friday afternoon people in Valdez, Alaska didn’t think about such things, few even knew they existed. People in Valdez thought about dinner. Then came a crunching and a grinding noise and the ground around and under them suddenly rolled and heaved. Great cracks appeared and water spurted up through them.
Valdez Offered a Point of Entry for the Alaska HIghway Builders
Valdez had sprung into being 64 years earlier when gold rushers flooded north through the North Atlantic and Prince William Sound to try their luck at the “All American Route” to the Klondike. The land portion of the route started with a climb up the Valdez Glacier, and Valdez sprouted between the glacier and the harbor. It sprouted on sand and gravel.
In 1964 the giant Pacific plate tired after eons of butting heads with the equally gigantic North American Plate, suddenly shoved itself 30 to 60 feet up under its neighbor. People and property suffered consequences as far away as Washington, Oregon and California.
Fifty-six miles from the epicenter, the crunching and grinding and the rolling and heaving lasted until the sand and gravel—the earth—under Valdez turned to liquid and much of the town simply sank into the water.
When the ocean itself reacted and sent a 200-foot-high tsunami toward the shore, it swept over and destroyed the rest of Valdez.
Being Alaskans, the survivors would remain in Valdez, prepared to survive more earthquakes and tsunamis. They would not again deal with liquified soil. They rebuilt their town, but they moved it a few miles up the coast away from the sand and gravel.
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