In plain, straightforward language: Arthur Grantz, George Plafker and Reuben Kachadoorian, Alaska’s Good Friday Earthquake, March 27, 1964: A Preliminary Geologic Evaluation (Washington, DC: US Geological Survey, 1964).
They have an air bladder: Ibid., 12.
an ambitious research program: Detailed in Wallace R. Hansen et al., The Alaska Earthquake of March 27, 1964: Field Investigations and Reconstruction Effort, USGS Professional Paper 541 (Washington, DC: US Geological Survey, 1966).
12. Rebuilding
it managed to arrive in Governor Bill Egan’s office: This letter and the others mentioned are in the University of Alaska–Fairbanks’ Alaska and Polar Regions Collections.
an early off-the-cuff estimate: The governor’s estimate was front-page news in the Anchorage Daily Times and other newspapers across the country the day after the quake.
estimates of the disaster’s cost had declined: The estimate of $310 million is roughly equivalent to $2.4 billion in 2017 dollars.
was at work almost immediately: For an overview of the Army Corps of Engineers’ work, see Patrick M. Coullahan and Allan D. Lucht, “Good Friday, 1964: The Great Alaskan Earthquake,” Military Engineer (Society of American Military Engineers), n.d., http://themilitaryengineer.com/index.php/staging/item/307-good-friday-1964-the-great-alaskan-earthquake.
Things didn’t go exactly as planned: National Research Council, The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, vol. 7, Human Ecology (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1970), 138.
Tatitlek residents would make this clear: Unpublished interview with Mary Kompkoff by employee of Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The gift had made quite a splash: The donation was reported in the Bridgeport Post (CT), among other newspapers.
There was some grumbling about this idea: For more on the relocation of Valdez, see National Research Council, The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, vol. 6, Engineering (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1973).
The planner, thirty-three-year-old Paul Finfer: “After the Earthquake,” 1982–83 Illinois Institute of Technology in the New Era 4. See also Henry Saeman, “Quake Helpful, but Not Essential to City Plan,” Dayton Daily News, August 31, 1966.
One person suggested a burlesque hall: “Citizen Questionnaire for Residential Section of Mineral Creek Townsite, Valdez, Alaska,” July 1964, Valdez Museum and Historical Archive.
As one resident put it later: Karen LaChance, Valdez: A Brief Oral History (Valdez, AK: Prince William Sound Community College, 1995), 72.
13. Deep Thinking
the subsidence was “secondary”: George Plafker and L. R. Mayo, “Tectonic Deformation, Subaqueous Slides and Destructive Waves,” US Geological Survey open-file report, 1965.
had moved about sixty feet: National Research Council, The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, vol. 2, Seismology and Geodesy (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1973), 428.
a “rider” to Hess’s hypothesis: Vine used the term in print and in an undated lecture available on YouTube: “Fred Vine Explaining Paleomagnetic Reversals,” uploaded May 12, 2008, youtu.be/CRx66ZpEhOg.
Vine thought it remarkable: Frederick J. Vine, “Reversals of Fortune,” in Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth, ed. Naomi Oreskes (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 49.
what was called polar wandering: A thorough look at the development of plate tectonics, including work on understanding magnetic reversals, is William Glen, The Road to Jaramillo: Critical Years of the Revolution in Earth Science (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982).
the Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis: Lawrence W. Morley describes his work in “The Zebra Pattern,” in Oreskes, Plate Tectonics, 67–85.
“You don’t believe all this rubbish, do you?”: Edward C. Bullard, William Maurice Ewing, 1906–1974 (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1975).
Cox had dropped out: Konrad B. Krauskopf, Allan V. Cox, 1926–1987 (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1988).
inadvertently ruining Doell’s summer: Interview with George Plafker.
like him, a native New Yorker: A short biography of Press is “Frank Press, 1981–93, NAS President,” National Academy of Sciences Online, n.d., www.nasonline.org/about-nas/history/highlights/frank-press.html.
Press’s paper: Frank Press and David Jackson, “Vertical Extent of Faulting and Elastic Strain Release,” Science 147 (February 19, 1965): 867–968.
“these measurements showed no abrupt changes”: George Plafker, “Tectonic Deformation Associated with the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake,” Science 148 (June 25, 1965): 1675–87.
14. Acceptance
several papers by Lamont researchers: Among those publishing papers at the time were Walter Pitman, James Heirtzler and Xavier Le Pichon.
Plafker’s talk: George Plafker, “Possible Evidence for Downward-Directed Mantle Convection Beneath the Eastern End of the Aleutian Arc,” American Geophysical Union Transactions 48, no. 1 (1967): 218.
Press approached him: Interview with George Plafker.
struck about one hundred miles offshore: George Plafker and J. C. Savage, “Mechanism of the Chilean Earthquakes of May 21 and May 22, 1960,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 81, no. 4 (1970): 1001–30.
a young geophysicist from Princeton: Background on Morgan’s talk is from Xavier Le Pichon, “Introduction to the Publication of the Extended Outline of Jason Morgan’s April 17, 1967, American Geophysical Union Paper on ‘Rises, Trenches, Great Faults and Crustal Blocks,’ ” Tectonophysics 187, nos. 1–3 (February 1991): 1–5.
far greater knowledge of earthquake hazards: For a concise discussion of the lasting impact of the 1964 quake, see Thomas M. Brocher et al., The 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake and Tsunamis: A Modern Perspective and Enduring Legacies (Menlo Park, CA: US Geological Survey, 2014).
the last major earthquake: For more on the potential for a Cascadia earthquake, see Kathryn Schulz, “The Really Big One,” New Yorker, July 20, 2015.
15. Epilogue
He returned to Guatemala: George Plafker, “Tectonic Aspects of the Guatemala Earthquake of 4 February 1976,” Science, n.s., 193, no. 4259 (September 24, 1976): 1201–8.
a landslide caused by the quake: George Plafker et al., “Geological Aspects of the May 31, 1979, Peru Earthquake,” Seismological Society of America Bulletin 61, no. 3 (1979): 178–79.
that resolve began to weaken: Description of the effort to establish a new village are from Donald R. Poling, comp., Chenega Diaries: Stories and Voices of Our Past (n.p.: Chenega Corporation, 2011); William E. Simeone and Rita Miraglia, An Ethnography of Chenega Bay and Tatitlek, Alaska (Anchorage: Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2000); and newspaper articles, including Helen Gillette, “After 16 Years, Still Rebuilding,” Anchorage Daily Times, March 27, 1980.
the need to do something about natives’ claims: A good short discussion of the Native Claims Act can be found in Claus M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History, 3rd ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). For a more detailed look at the pipeline decision, see Peter A. Coates, Trans-Alaskan Pipeline Controversy: Technology, Conservation and the Frontier (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1993).
yet another disaster struck Alaska: University of Alaska–Fairbanks’s Project Jukebox has oral histories from the spill: “Exxon Valdez Oil Spill,” Project Jukebox, n.d., http://jukebox.uaf.edu/site7/exxonvaldez, accessed in May 2016.
a new community in Chenega Bay: See Simeone and Miraglia, Ethnography of Chenega Bay.
He’d gotten on a boat: Interview with Tom and Gloria McAlister.
There was even a proposal: R. K. Alman, Development Plan Report: Valdez Historic Site (Anchorage: Alaska Department of Natural Resources, 1967).
an icebreaker-tanker: For more on this effort, see Ross Coen, Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil: The Epic Voyage of the SS Manhattan Through the Northwest Passage (Fairbanks: University of Al
aska Press, 2012).
The pipeline jobs changed the town: Interview with Gary Minish; also see Karen LaChance, Valdez: A Brief Oral History (Valdez, AK: Prince William Sound Community College, 1995).
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&n
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