Anchorage, Alaska
Northern quake: A magnitude-7.0 earthquake shook Alaska’s largest city last week—the area’s most significant seismic event since 1964. It violently jolted houses, shredded roads and bridges, cut power to 50,000 people, and left homes and offices in disarray. Officials reported one serious injury, after a homeowner tried to extinguish a fire. Multiple people suffered lacerations from broken glass. The quake occurred around 8:30 a.m. amid the morning rush, snarling traffic and cracking roadways into ice-like pieces of jagged earth. More than 200 aftershocks followed in the ensuing 12 hours. At least four of those were magnitude
5.0 or greater. Gov. Bill Walker issued a disaster declaration and said President Trump told him, “We will fix Alaska.” An Alaska-based scientist at the
National Weather Service called it the strongest quake he’d ever felt and “the most terrifying minute of my life.”