7.2 quake in Alaska near Anchorage, tsunami warning, bridge collapse

[JasonPratt]

This happened about around lunch their time, so less than an hour ago. My family has family up there, reporting on FB.

Can't keep an eye on the news this afternoon, any links appreciated.

[JasonPratt]

Okay, actually 2 hours ago. (Mom didn't notice FB timing posting.)

[DoctorQuest]

I saw this on NPR at lunch time. Hope all the Alaska grogs and families are OK.

[JasonPratt]

The tsunami warning has been downgraded to a watch, at least.

My mom's.... grannnnnd-nephew (I think) used to live in Barrow, but moved to Palmer with his wife recently, just about on top of the epicenter. Wife said she couldn't get home due to a collapsed bridge. Unsure if she had to find a way around, or if that was the only way. (This being Alaska, I would suppose those odds to be 50/50...?)

[airboy]

That area of Alaska has had a monster quake before.  We took a train trip from south of Anchorage up to Denali and the evidence was there when the guide pointed it out.

[JasonPratt]

Yep, Good Friday 1964 (or '65, I forget which -- I'm sure they don't). Some areas caught a 100' tall multi-surge tsunami afterward (or so I've read -- not sure the wave height itself was that high, but more like it surged up that far above sea level.)

[Sir Slash]

That quake was 9.2, the second strongest in recorded history. Don't know what number 1 was. No recorded deaths last I heard, thank The Good Lord. 

[Steelgrave]

I have friends in Anchorage, all of whom are ok. One posted this on his Facebook last night:

[Steelgrave]

Also from my friend's Facebook, a section of the Seward Highway which I have driven numerous times:



And near Wasilla:



And a supermarket in Eagle River near where I lived:

[Gusington]

Jeez...glad everyone is ok. I read a long time ago that the strongest earthquake ever (somewhat) recorded was in Missouri (of all places) about 200 years ago.

[Staggerwing]

IIRC, the actual highest on the richter scale ever was in South America somewhere, maybe Chile? The one in Missouri was the highest in the USA.

[JasonPratt]

New Madrid, MO, just across the Mississippi from us here in West TN. It led to stories of Paul Bunyan's blue ox drinking the river! -- because it caused a river tsunami that created an oxbow lake (known as Reelfoot Lake) in what is now Lake county, the most northwestern county in Tennessee. It seems to have swooped up a bunch of hills in that corner, too?! -- most of the land is flat swampy plains in that area, but as you get near Reelfoot it turns into a cluster of round hills like in a video game!

Since Reelfoot has no natural water ingress, it has been dying out since then, which has accelerated during my lifetime. I'll probably live to see its disappearance into a series of patchy bog holes. Back when our family's factory was trying to figure out what we wanted to do with our brand new fiberglass choppers (in the early 70s), we contracted out to make some of the foot-paddle flat-bottomed tourist boats at Reelfoot -- which I'm glad we got away from because that would have been an insurance nightmare!

Nowadays the lake is more famous for being the oldest of the known bald eagle nesting sites in Tennessee. We even get a few ranging down here to Dyer, a couple of counties away, to visit!


Anyway, the New Madrid faultline is no joke. We get a few earthquakes from it, and its related faultlines, on occasion -- including a rather protracted shudder only a few weeks ago -- but it's overdue to hit again, and the damage would be catastrophic, ten or twenty times worse than the San Andreas fault letting go. (Though that's only because San Andreas adjusts on a regular basis with some strong earthquakes already.) It could conceivably even collapse several thousand square miles of land into the aquifer under West TN, and backwash the river(s) into the pit: which is what happened on a much smaller scale at Reelfoot. Imagine a sinkhole about a thousand feet deep, and about a hundred miles across, with Memphis at the southern end of it. I mean what used to be Memphis.

[airboy]

The big news in this story are engineers and building codes.  After the 1964 quake, Anchorage had very stringent building codes put in.  As a result, this very strong quake which would have killed hundreds (or thousands) elsewhere killed nobody.  Roads buckled, overpasses collapsed and lots of relatively minor damage - but nobody died.

Some of this will be a real task to clean up with winter starting - but no bodies to bury.

[Gusington]

River tsunami??  :o

[Steelgrave]

The big news in this story are engineers and building codes.  After the 1964 quake, Anchorage had very stringent building codes put in.  As a result, this very strong quake which would have killed hundreds (or thousands) elsewhere killed nobody.  Roads buckled, overpasses collapsed and lots of relatively minor damage - but nobody died.

Some of this will be a real task to clean up with winter starting - but no bodies to bury.

You're right, Airboy, the construction codes no doubt saved a lot of lives. The problem is going to be winter. Anchorage has limited ways to get from point A to point B and several of those roadways are now down. Summer is known in Alaska as "Construction weather" because it's the only time roadways can be repaired and the joy of summer is often mixed with the frustration of highway improvements. The Seward Highway is jammed in the summer with folks coming or going to the Kenai Peninsula, a place I spent weeks in every summer and have fond memories of. As far as transportation goes, it's going to be a nightmare winter for Alaskans but as you pointed out it could have been so much worse.