A poorly written book about an interesting subject. The “Good Friday” earthquake of March 27, 1964, made a serious mess out of Anchorage and nearby Alaska communities. It also generated a swarm of tsunamis. Most were local, landslide-induced waves (not that those weren’t bad enough; more people in Alaska were killed by waves than by building collapse, fire, or any other earthquake-related phenomena). However, the +20K cubic miles of sea water displaced by fault block movement caused effects far away from Alaska, in particular the coast of southern Oregon and northern California, and in most particular Crescent City, California.


The book jacket blurb describes author Dennis Powers as “a practicing attorney who turned his attention to writing ten years ago”. I suspect Mr. Power’s courtroom experience allowed him to win a lot of arguments with editors, unfortunately. Much of the book reads like it was composed at a word processor by somebody who hadn’t quite got the cut-and-paste concept down; paragraphs sometimes turn up out of place and whole sections of description are repeated with only slight variations. Mr. Powers also seems excessively credulous of “eye-witness” testimony. For example, one of the later chapters on reconstruction after the disaster, after describing the clean-up of a feed store, has this – both out of place and undocumented:


“A deputy sheriff warned a man in a bar about the oncoming tidal wave, then jumped in his car to speed away. The drunk ran out of the bar with the tidal wave nipping at his heels. He grabbed the patrol car’s rear bumper as the deputy sped away, and surfed behind as the car slid over the ocean.”

Right.

The introduction isn’t too bad; we get the usual disaster book cast of characters – a family camping on the beach in Oregon, a couple of Air Force buddies fishing at the mouth of the Klamath River, some friends celebrating a birthday in an ocean front bar. The next chapter, alas, is a geologically incoherent account of the cause of the Good Friday Earthquake and tsunami – tectonic plates “crashing together” built up “intolerable pressure” and “hurtled” a mass of water toward the North American continent. Powers manages to give the impression that because the line of fault rupture, if extended, would have pointed more or less at Crescent City the tsunami was somehow “aimed” at the town. We also get told that tidal waves “feel” the ocean bottom in shallow water, and that shallow water “attracts” tsunamis.


Powers tracks the wave’s progress down the coast. The Seismic Sea Wave Warning System in Honolulu issued an “advisory”, then a “bulletin”, then a “warning”, including an accurate estimate for the arrival time at Crescent City and various other points, and the prediction that the danger could last for several hours. Unfortunately, the news didn’t filter down to local agencies until just before the wave arrived. The family camping on the beach in Oregon lost their four children (only one body was found) and one Air Force fishermen made it but the other didn’t.


Then we get a history of Crescent City, and an account of previous tsunamis. Waves from Pacific Rim earthquakes had arrived before, and while some caused damage, no one had been killed. Two factors conspired to make things especially bad for Crescent City – all the previous events had been single, not multiple, waves; and the last tsunami warning had been a false alarm, resulting in the recall of the local sheriff who had ordered mass evacuation.


Thus, many Crescent City residents, even if they heard radio or TV warning or police evacuation orders, didn’t take things very seriously. The first wave arrived just before midnight and was about 9 feet above normal high tide. It damaged some boats in the harbor and sloshed into the shorefront area, flooding a few businesses and damaging others with floating debris. The second wave was 3 feet lower and arrived about 00:15; almost everybody figured that was it and began mopping up. The third wave showed up at 01:00 and was 11 feet above high tide. This one was damaged aboveground tanks at gas stations and a bulk fuel plant; fires started and power went out. Nobody’s quite sure how big the fourth and largest wave was – it shredded the tide gauge at 01:40. Visual estimates put it at 21 feet above high tide.


(It’s sometimes hard to figure out exactly how high the tsunamis were from Power’s descriptions. Sometimes he uses MLLW (mean lowest low water) as a reference, sometimes average low tide, sometimes high tide. Since high tide did occur about when the tsunamis arrived, I’ve converted the references to high tide as best as I can make out, since I think that gives the best idea of how high the water got above “normal”).


To his credit, Powers does point out that none of the tsunamis that hit Crescent City were the giant walls of water so popular in disaster movies; instead, the ocean simply rose like a rapid tide, retreated, and rose again. However, ordinary ocean waves were superimposed on top of this. There were sometimes walls of water when the tsunamis moving in encountered creeks and rivers flowing out; this is the “tidal bore” phenomenon but on a grander scale.

Powers frequently credits the skill and experience of the loggers and fishermen of Crescent City as contributing to their survival. While I don’t want to seem insensitive, a lot of the public response didn’t seem very well thought out. One resident heard the police warning and promptly drove to the docks to see if his boat was alright. Although the ocean “didn’t look right” to him, he decided to walk to a bar and buy cigarettes. Once there, he found it full of people who had fled at the first warning but then retuned to pick up a birthday party where they left off. The third and fourth waves arrived and carried the whole bar into a nearby creek. Two of the “experienced outdoorsmen” then decided to swim to shore (keep in mind it’s March in northern California), walk a mile to one man’s house, pick up a skiff, convince a neighbor to load it in his pickup, drive back to the creek, launch the skiff, row to the ruined bar, load seven people in a 14 foot boat, then row back to town. They almost made it, too; alas, what comes in must go out and the receding waters coupled with the creek’s flow pulled them sideways through a bridge culvert. One managed to leap up and catch a bridge railing; another, amazingly, made it through the steel grate at one end of the culvert and out the other side. The rest did not.

The final section deals with recovery. Surprisingly, Mr. Powers does not blame government or corporations (although he does note repeatedly that people probably would today). Crescent City apparently still has (as of the publication date of 2005) vacant lots left over from the 1964 tsunami. Urban renewal by seismic sea wave apparently doesn’t work very well; many residents regret that the “quaint” and “touristy” nature of the town was lost forever.

This is a different sort of disaster book than the ones I’ve been reading. Here the main problem was not dealing with medical and rescue issues after a sudden disaster, like Halifax or Texas City, but getting people to take warnings seriously. Local police did do their best to evacuate, even though they had past false alarms; the victims either were in isolated areas where no warning reached them or got warned but didn’t take things seriously until it was too late. What to do about that? I suppose now that Crescent City knows exactly what parts of town will be inundated by the next one, they can concentrate evacuation and warning efforts in those areas while keeping everybody else out. The tsunami warning system also works a lot better now; mid-ocean instrument buoys and satellite radar can track a tsunami while it’s still out to sea without depending on land-based reports. (At least, the Pacific system works better; sorry about that, Indian Ocean countries).

I have some questions; why were there four waves instead of one? (I have some vague thoughts about waves reflecting and interference patterns and stuff like that; Mr. Powers never mentions anything). Why was Crescent City hit so hard while other, seemingly similar, towns just got a little damp? (Interestingly, a look at the map discloses that the Crescent City harbor faces southwest, away, or at least crosswise, from Mr. Powers supposedly “aimed” fault line). There’s probably a USGS report explaining all this somewhere, but the book has no bibliography so I’ll have to track it down myself.

Not worth much as an explanation of tsunamis, but perhaps of some interest for depictions of the way people will act when faced by disaster. ( )