The Good Friday Earthquake - Alaska 1964

Alaska has hundreds of earthquakes each year.

Most of them are small and happen on the Aleutian Chain, where there are also several volcanoes.
Sometimes smaller earthquakes called aftershocks happen after a big earthquake.
Although aftershocks are not as strong, they can still cause weakened buildings to collapse.

The March 27, 1964 Good Friday earthquake measured 8.6 on the Richter scale, but was later bumped up to 9.2, which makes it the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America.
It lasted nearly four minutes.

During the earthquake, streets in Anchorage cracked wide open.
The quake was so strong, it knocked down buildings and split houses in half.
The walls in dozens of downtown shops collapsed, destroying things inside.
In the Turnagain Heights area, the bluff slid to the ocean. Seventy-five homes were carried away into Cook Inlet and destroyed.
The earthquake's epicenter was in Prince William Sound, about 80 miles east of Anchorage. It started about 12 ½ miles below the Earth's surface.

The Good Friday earthquake was one of the strongest earthquakes in over 400 years. Nine people were killed in Anchorage and more than 100 died in other areas.



Some cities close to the ocean were hit with a tsunami, a huge sea wave unleashed by the earthquake. The giant waves, some as big as 50 feet high, flooded Seward, Valdez, Kodiak and other coastal communities. They washed out fisheries and destroyed boats and homes. Some of the waves traveled all the way down the West Coast of North America and hit Hawaii.

Most people who live in Alaska have felt an earthquake. Luckily, most of the earthquakes are small and don't cause any damage. Still, nobody really knows when a big earthquake will hit, but scientists are trying to figure out ways to predict them.