Second of three parts
A few years after the Exxon Valdez supertanker grounded and disgorged much of its gooey cargo, scientists evaluating the damage found, on some beaches, an older source of lingering oil -- aged, hardened remnants of oil disgorged from storage tanks by tsunamis unleashed during the March 27, 1964 earthquake.
Like the shaking that reshaped Alaska's ground, the waves of water created by the Great Alaska Earthquake that struck the state 50 years ago left a lasting legacy.
Most of the damage and the vast majority of the estimated 132 earthquake deaths came from the succession of tsunamis that hit as far away as California. Waves carried debris and pollution as well as water.
"There was enough oil in that water that, at the time the second tsunami wave came in Seward, it was actually on fire," said geologist Peter Haeussler, Alaska coordinator for earthquake hazards at the U.S. Geological Survey.
In the Native Alutiiq village of Chenega, a third of the residents died, including children who were torn away from their parents. Chenega's death toll of 23 made that Prince William Sound community the hardest hit by the earthquake in terms of the percentage of its population that perished.
Tsunami deaths occurred as far away as Crescent City, Calif. The precise total death toll is yet unknown, and agencies have used slightly varying numbers.
In Chenega, where villagers were savvy to natural-disaster hazards, residents were aware of the tsunami danger before the first wave swept in. The Prince William Sound water receded, uncovering a large stretch of seafloor. Frightened adults in the village urged children to run upland and not look back, according to first-person accounts in a book published by the Chenega Corp., "The Day that Cries Forever." But the window for safety was short. The first tsunami, generated by local underwater slides, came just minutes later.
Alaska had a tsunami-warning system at the time. The Seismic Sea Wave Warning System, created in 1948, was a legacy of a 1946 quake in the Aleutians that generated a tsunami that killed 165 people, most of them in Hawaii. After 1965, the system was dramatically expanded. The Alaska Tsunami Warning Center was established in seismically-stable Palmer in two years later.
Its mission was broadened 1982 to cover the entire West Coast, and in October its mission was broadened again as it became the National Tsunami Warning Center.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, relieved of its Alaska duties when the Palmer center was established, has also had its mission expanded over the years. After the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami catastrophe -- a disaster of which victims had little or no warning -- the Hawaii center took on oversight duties for that part of the world.
Seward was first Alaska community to receive a NOAA "TsunamiReady" designation, given to communities with detailed preparations such as identification and marking of tsunami evacuation routes. Now there are 14 such communities in Alaska, and the Anchorage School District has also won the designation.
Chenega Bay, the new community settled in 1984 by Chenega survivors, is not yet on the TsunamiReady list. However, the new village, on Evans Island in Prince William Sound, is on safer and more stable ground than the old site.