Bizarro

Last night I dreamed I was on the 80^th floor of a high rise building. Suddenly, wind caused the building to break in half right at the 80^th floor, and the top half fell over. I walked, jumped, and slid down ruined stairwells to the ground.

When I went up to my loft this morning, all the drawers on my filing cabinets were ajar.

Must have been an earthquake during the night.

I find it fascinating how real life events become incorporated into dreams, but how to explain my diligent rescue of numerous packages of frozen Green Giant veggies as I made my way down that ruined dream stairwell?

In my case, dreaming is much like watching bizarre movies all night long.

The Day the Earth Broke, Part Three

(Part three of my experiences during and after the Great Alaskan Earthquake of March 27, 1964, follows. The long delay in between episodes was caused by waiting for permission from the Anchorage Museum to use certain photos.)

In my parents’ WWII era Willys jeep, I headed towards my apartment in downtown Anchorage. The normal route I took was straight up KFQD Road (now called Northern Lights Blvd.) a couple miles, left on Spenard Road and down the steep “ess” curves of Romig Hill, across West Chester Creek to L St. at 15^th Ave. Then, straight up L St. for ten blocks to Fifth Ave, and a half-block right.

The family Jeep.

The apartment I shared with a girlfriend was located on the upper floor of an old house, a large attic converted into a nice two-bedroom unit. Access was gained by an enclosed, exterior staircase attached to the end of the building.

Five blocks from home I got my first hint of the massive damage that I would see in the next few days. The Four Seasons, a multi-story apartment building newly completed and waiting for tenants, was a pile of rubble at Ninth and L. Only the elevator shaft was intact. The last of the building to topple, it lay at an angle atop the ruins.

Photo of Four Seasons apartments by Alice Waite

Photo of L St. graben, courtesy of Anchorage Museum, B83.91.S4176.58, Ward W. Wells, photographer)

I could drive no farther on L St.. The road ahead was a jumble of fissures and gashes. I drove two blocks east and approached my apartment on Fifth Avenue. My second floor home was now even with the ground. Located smack in the center of a narrow strip of land between two parallel faults, the building had settled about eight feet, perfectly intact but for the exterior staircase I needed to get in my apartment. It had been wrenched from the building and now leaned against it with a wide gap at the bottom.

I parked the Jeep and climbed down into the graben on some slabs of frozen snow and soil. I checked the staircase, took off my high-heels and started up the precariously-leaning steps. I figured the worst that could happen would be a short fall to the ground, followed by a hard bump. Unless another earthquake happened, of course.

When I was close to the top of the steps, I could see the whole thing was hanging on by the tips of nails that had been pulled from the external wall of the house. I had to slam my shoulder against the door to force it open, all the while hoping the jiggling wouldn’t cause the stairwell to fall.

More L St. fault damage, with elevator shaft of Four Seasons apartments in background. Photo by Alice Waite.

Once inside, I felt I was on solid footing. I grabbed a few things from my bedroom, using a flashlight to find warm clothes, jeans, and flat shoes. Then, I had to go down those steps. I made it safely, but I wondered how I was going to be able to move all my belongings out, especially the boxes of books.

The quake had hit near 5:30 p.m. Official sunset time had been an hour after. Twilight lingered for a while, though the day had been overcast and darkness came quicker. By the time got back to the Jeep, it was fully dark.

Damage near L St., Alice Waite, photographer.

Next I made a quick drive around town, and checked on the little house at 15^th and E St. that I had moved out of four months prior. It was unoccupied and appeared undamaged. I hoped to move back in. Concerned for the safety of friends in the area, I drove past their homes. In some I saw candlelight. I didn’t stop to visit. Turning the corner near one’s home, I saw more devastation.

The Hillside Apartments, a large apartment building, had sawed itself into ruins, as if the upper floors had moved in an opposing direction than the bottom flows. I had more friends who lived in that building, but no way to check on their safety. It appeared deserted.

Front side of Hillside Apartments. Alice Waite photo.

Back side of Hillside Apartments, Alice Waite photo.

I headed back to the radio station. Denny O’Day, the station engineer, had rushed back into the building after the shaking stopped, shut off the electrical controls and then tried to call his wife at their home nearby. After many rings and no answer, he raced home to check on his wife and four month old daughter. They were safe, he said, but his wife was at one end of their long living room and the baby was in her crib at the other end. That end, he said, white-faced, was suspended in the air. The ground had fallen away from the house. He was able to rescue the baby without the house falling into the large gash in the earth.

This isn't Denny's house, but gives an idea of Turnagain subdivision damage. U.S. Corp of Engineers photo.

Returning to the station, Denny started the emergency generator in the basement and got the station back on air. It was then twenty minutes after the quake. Eventually the other stations in the city began broadcasting.

Denny was also deputy director of the state’s Civil Defense emergency radio network, and had a mobile unit that could connect with emergency frequencies. Immediately, KFQD committed to broadcasting emergency messages only. At 10,000 watts, it was the city’s most powerful radio station.

Soon after my return, we received an emergency message warning of tsunamis. I went to my parents’ home nearby, just as door to door teams arrived to issue a similar notice. We evacuated to a Greek Orthodox Church, the priest of which was a friend of my father’s. There was little to do but wait.

Near eleven p.m., the priest’s son said he was picking up radio broadcasts from San Francisco on his car radio. I went out to listen. I sat in the front passenger seat of his car and heard a radio announcer in San Francisco reporting on massive traffic jams along the shoreside in the city. People were flocking to the shores to watch the threatened tsunami roll in!

(For a complete and gripping account of the earthquake, please access the following link:

http://books.google.com/books?id=WEErAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=KFQD+radio+after+earthquake+1964&source=bl&ots=1QHp0DN887&sig=H5f76aR_uWreIiosNq33TYMCu_s&hl=en&ei=wZLLS6eFOITOsgPu0439Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=KFQD%20radio%20after%20earthquake%201964&f=false

The Day the Earth Broke

It is said that when disaster strikes, our brains process the information differently than usual. Rather than a fluid, coherent video of occurring events, we see disaster as a series of quick photographic stills. In recalling those images, they are viewed much like the small comic pages of sketched characters that, when the pages are ruffled, seem to be moving.

When disaster intruded into my life on a quiet Friday afternoon in early, early spring, it wasn’t movement I was seeking. Quite the contrary. I wanted everything to hold still.

Good Friday, March 27, 1964, late afternoon.

I had less than a half hour to get the news stories ready for the announcer at KFQD radio to read during the six o’clock news. This was our major newscast for the day, and I was the only one of two reporters working. I’d just returned from my rounds at the Anchorage police station, the courts building, and city hall. Now it was time to check in by phone to the State Troopers office.

I kicked off my high-heeled shoes and rested my feet on the lower bar of the typewriter stand that sat perpendicular to my desk, took the handset off the phone’s cradle and dialed the number. A dispatcher, whose name I have long since forgotten, answered and began to give me details of a fatality. A man had fallen to his death off a railroad trestle far north of Anchorage.

Seventy-five miles away in Prince William Sound, and eighteen miles deep, the earth’s crust had had enough. A massive plate of rock called the Pacific Plate had been pushing against the North American Plate for ten of thousands a year, moving between two and three inches a year. Unable to rise on top of the North American Plate, it was instead forcing its way under it, causing a fault line where the two plates fractured to allow the movement. The crust was compressed, folded, and warped, causing some surface areas to sink and others to be shoved upwards.

At 5:26 p.m., all hell broke loose.

I recall how I was sitting when the building began to shake: holding the phone to my left ear, leaning sideways into the desk, making notes with my right hand. The shaking increased. I glanced across my typewriter at Donna, the woman seated at the desk abutting mine. We exchanged smiles. Just another earthquake. Ho hum.

But this wasn’t just another earthquake. This one wasn’t going to be content knocking jars of strawberry and raspberry jam off the shelves in the grocery store, making a fine mess for the stock boy to clean up. This quake had loftier ambitions. This quake was a killer on the loose.

With rock crushing against rock only eighteen miles deep, the energy released by these forces was the equivalent of detonating a billion TONS of TNT. For long minutes, the earth battled against itself, rupturing along a five hundred mile length, and shaking 50,000 square miles of the crust.

Dennis, the station engineer, the man who kept KFQD on the air, ran out the front door of the station yelling, “My tower! My tower!” Behind him, a massive steel safe over four feet tall rolled across the floor, imprisoning the announcer in the on-air booth. Fortunately, the booth had two entrances, and he ran out the other, also yelling, “Everyone out! Everyone get out!”

The smiles at just-another-earthquake fell off our faces. I reached down, grabbed my shoes, and stumbled to the door. A step out of my chair, I head a loud crashing noise behind me, but didn’t stop to look. Standing up was almost impossible. Outside a number of concrete steps with no handrail stood between me and the snow-covered ground. I managed to get down the steps without assistance, but the woman behind me was aided by Dennis and the announcer.

Once out of the building, I staggered like a drunk across the parking lot to my car where I grabbed the door handle with both hands to keep upright. The tall tower behind the station was swaying horribly. The frozen ground under my feet was a spiderweb of cracks.

Behind me, across KFQD Road in the newest residential subdivision called Turnagain by the Sea, came sounds, sounds like tiny ladyfinger firecrackers exploding. I looked behind me, but a row of birch and cottonwood and spruce trees obscured my sight. I puzzled about those noises, but forgot about them as the shaking increased and increased and increased. I had more immediate things to worry about.

This can’t go on forever, I thought, it’ll stop any second now. It didn’t. It went on and on and on, seeming to slacken just a bit, then roaring back with renewed energy and increasing violence. I watched the ground, thinking it might open and try to swallow me. I needed to be alert and ready to jump to safety.

That’s when the unthinkable invaded my mind. This wasn’t an earthquake. This was the something else much, much worse than an earthquake. This was the end of the earth. I was going to die. No, I thought, no! I’m only 23.

(to be continued)