Crescent City Tsunami of 1964
On Good Friday, 1964, at exactly 5:36 P.M., the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America—a whopping 9.2 magnitude on the Richter scale—decimated Anchorage Alaska, collapsing buildings while taking 131 innocent lives. Lasting four minutes and 38 seconds, the megathrust earthquake unleashed a series of five tsunami waves, each one more powerful than the last, reaching open ocean wave heights of
Tsunami Slams West Coast
150 feet before slamming into the coastlines of Southeast Alaska, British Columbia and the United States. Hardest hit was the small logging and fishing community of Crescent City California, just south of the Oregon border, when in the late night hours of March 27th, four to five tsunami waves swept through 60 blocks of the town to some 3,000 residents, completely destroying 29 blocks in the harbor area, while taking the lives of 12 people and injuring 24 others.
Prone to Tsunamis
In an area prone to tsunamis as far back as the 1700s, after the first wave swept through town, father and son tavern owners Gary and Bill Clawson returned to the Longbranch with Gary’s wife, Bill’s fiancee and two employees, mopping up the floor before celebrating Bill’s birthday with one last drink of the night. Their decision would prove fatal when the second wave ripped the Longbranch off its foundation. Escaping to their now floating roof, they boarded a runaway boat in hopes of reaching safety.
Sad Loss of Life
Instead, the boat capsized in raging waters, taking the lives of everyone but 27-year-old Bill Clawson. Insert boat captain recollection: When the fourth wave came ashore under the light of a full moon, Battery Point Lighthouse keepers Peggy Coons and her husband Roxey watched in horror as the ocean receded more than three quarters of a mile offshore, exposing a labyrinth of once underwater caves, canyons and basins, taking with it the Citizen’s Dock and a large lumber barge, before a frightening wall of water past their lighthouse fortification and swept into town.
Survivor Recalls Mayhem
Peggy recalls that as the water flushed back out to sea, “Cars and building were now moving seaward again. Beds, furniture, televisions, mattresses and other objects were moving by so fast that we could barely tell what they were,” making the Crescent City Tsunami of 1964, one of the most devastating events in California’s long history of natural catastrophes.