The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Undersea quake sends Alaskans fleeing from feared tsunami
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA » A powerful undersea earthquake sent Alaskans fumbling for suitcases and racing to evacuation centers in the middle of the night Tuesday after a cellphone alert warned that a tsunami could smash into the state’s southern coast and western Canada.
The killer wave never materialized, but people endured several tense hours in shelters, waiting for a potential catastrophe that could wipe their communities away at any moment.
The magnitude 7.9 quake in the Gulf of Alaska triggered the jarring alert that awoke people shortly after midnight Tuesday. Fleeing motorists sometimes clogged the only highway in their rush to get to higher ground. Many took refuge at schools and other shelters.
For Alaskans accustomed to tsunami threats and regular tsunami drills, the early morning alert still created some fretful moments. The phone message read: “Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland.”
Keith Perkins got the phone alert and later heard sirens going off in his hometown of Sitka. He said people on Facebook were talking about whether the threat was real and what they should do.
Given the magnitude of the earthquake, Perkins said, he thought it best to head to the high school, a tsunami evacuation point, even though in the past he felt his home was probably high enough.
“I figured I’d probably just better play it safe,” he said.
Hours later, the tsunami warning was canceled and people were allowed to return home for an hour or two before the normal workday began.
There were no reports of damage, not even on Kodiak Island, the closest land to the epicenter.
Only after the all-clear was sounded did a little levity emerge. In Kodiak, King’s Diner invited folks to breakfast on its website: “Hungry? Tsunami got you up early.”
The quake was recorded at 12:32 a.m. in the Pacific Ocean about 170 miles southeast of Kodiak, home to one of the nation’s largest Coast Guard bases.
The temblor prompted the warning across thousands of miles of Alaska’s southern coast, from Attu in the Aleutian Islands to Canada’s border with Washington state. Kodiak is about 200 miles (321 kilometers) south of Anchorage, the state’s largest city, which was not under a tsunami threat.
Elsewhere in the United States, Washington state, Oregon, California and Hawaii were under tsunami watches, which eventually were lifted. Officials in Japan say there was no tsunami threat there.