Tsunamis on American Shores

Tom Skilling
Reporter

November 11, 2005

The world got an instant education on tsunamis almost a year ago when a powerful earthquake in the Indian Ocean kicked up tsunamis that swallowed miles of coastline across several continents.

But tsunamis have hit American shores long before the Asian tsunami.

WGN Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling is here now with the story of the largest tsunami wave on record.

The Lituya Bay tsunami dwarfs the Asian tsunami. It hit in 1958 and was so large, that for a time, the wave would have swamped the sears tower by almost 300 feet! The difference is, it hit in a very remote part of the world.

Lituya Bay is located about 120 miles southwest of Juneau, off the Gulf of Alaska. Our journey to Lituya Bay was by float plane.

To visit Lituya Bay is to understand why this area is so tsunami prone. Earthquakes happen frequently here and they're big. And the terrain is steep, steeper than almost anywhere else on the planet. On the night of July 9, a massive part of that mountain broke off and cascaded into the water. It hit with force that scientists liken to that of an asteroid. The wave it created was over 1,700 feet high.

"What happened in 1958 was one of the largest earthquakes to strike North America. That earthquake was right on the fault line which is in the back of Lituya Bay. The glacier that lies on that fault line, the north glacier, the one they call Lituya Glacier, jumped up into the air and shook like crazy. Tremendous amount of ice and mountain debris fell into the water," says Mary Lou Blakeslee, Glacier Bay park ranger.

While one mountain crashed into the bay's deep waters another peak rose 50 feet in an instant.

Chris maier-national weather service "That rock fell into the head of the bay, caused a huge splash wave that measured up 1,722 feet tore out all of the vegetation on the land, and then that proceeded to that wave proceeded to gain momentum and track down through the rest of the bay and it wiped out everything along the beaches as far as the trees and vegetation," says Chris Maier, National Weather Service. "It's the largest tsunami wave on record."

Tom: "Anywhere?"

Maier: "Anywhere in the world."

Fisherman Howard Ulrich and his little boy Sonny rode out the wave on their boat "Edrie" anchored in Lituya Bay for the night.

"I was asleep and then that earthquake started so that woke me up. I saw the splash. Something I was looking off on at the shoreline and something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and it turned out to be this big splash. OK, then you see that big horrible splash and it looked like you know like Bikini when they set off the atomic bomb you know and but then as the water is falling back down into the bay, out of the bottom of that came this big wave and that wave was actually we figure it was about 800 feet high," Ulrich says.

Ulrich estimates the original 1,720 foot wave had dropped to about 150 feet by the time it reached them. It gave his boat a life-saving push.

"We were actually looking down on the trees, and I'm pretty sure we were over the land at that time and still pushing that old Chrysler Crown to get us up over the top of that wave and then of course the water coming back down off of that land gave us another push out and helped us out," Ulrich says.

By now the water was churning with smaller waves filled with giant trees and ice chunks. Ulrich worried they'd cut off his escape route.

Ham radio call: "The whole thing came off or course, brush and everything it's just solid behind me and when it comes down it's gonna block the whole entrance, so I guess I'd better get the hell outta here. God, what an awful site, it looks like the end of the world."

Ulrich was one of only six people who witnessed the Lituya Bay tsunami. He and his son are the only living survivors today.

And for more features and photos on Tom Skilling's trip to Alaska click here.