Editorial roundup

Dec. 3 Ketchikan Daily News Unfathomable

Alaska is unfathomable.

When an earthquake struck the Anchorage area Friday morning, cellphone messages to Alaskans started flowing in — from the Lower forty-eight and other places where Alaskans’ family and friends live.

Such was the case in Ketchikan. “Are you all right?” the messages from afar read after viewing reports of the earthquake and the tsunami warning that followed. We sent the same message to Anchorage.

National news outlets told viewers the tsunami warning was for southern coastal communities. What it meant was coasts hundreds of miles away. Anchorage is 775 miles north of Ketchikan. The distance between Ketchikan and Kodiak, where Alaskans were briefly warned of a tsunami reaction to the quake, is 808 miles. …

In this case, Ketchikan is far from the earthquake.

The scenario goes to show how the size of Alaska remains unfathomable to those who haven’t been here, and, perhaps, to even some of those who have but never ventured beyond Ketchikan or Southeast.

As the latest Alaska earthquake makes headlines throughout the country and around the world, this earthquake isn’t only a geology story. It’s about geography.

The world will learn that this wasn’t the big one (the 1964 earthquake tops it), but it was big enough. But Alaska is still bigger.