Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Alaska and the Largest Earthquake Ever Recorded with Jeff Dauler

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

In today’s episode, Sharon is joined by podcaster Jeff Dauler and the two sit down and talk about Alaska’s 1964 earthquake–the largest earthquake ever recorded. While scientists said that the quake made the earth “ring like a bell” and the shaking and subsequent landslides and tsunamis devastated many Alaskan towns and cities, it also led to modern geological insights about how the earth’s crust is understood. They also talk about the lead scientist–a pioneer in her field–who led the efforts to identify potential future disasters and develop safety protocols. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Always delighted to have you with me. And today I have a couple of really good brain tangles for you. I'm chatting with my friend Jeff Dollar, who is a podcaster extraordinaire himself. This is a fantastic podcast called The Upside. And we have some good stuff to get into about the state of Alaska. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Oh my goodness, Jeff, you are finally here after a million ice storms and illnesses and reschedules. It's happening. So people are not already following you, not already listening to your podcast. I'd love for you to tell them more about it. My wife and I started a podcast in 2019 after I lost my job in radio.

I worked in radio for 25 years and got fired for the first time in 2019. And so I said, you know what, let's do a podcast. And we were trying to think of the angle and trying to think of the theme. And we decided that the podcast was actually the upside of me losing my job. And we had, it was just a really rough year or so before I got fired. And we were able to glide through all of that because, because right when we got engaged, we started practicing daily gratitude. So we wanted to have kind of a gratitude positive theme. And I said, you know what, let's focus on like the bounce back of all this negative stuff.

We settled on the name, The Upside. It's a 30 minute show. We do it every single day. And the center of it is gratitude and finding the positive, understanding that even in the difficult times, there's always an upside, but that's not all we talk about. We don't want to be preachy. We're intentionally not preachy. We're also not all sunshine and rainbows. I think a lot of people believe that in order to practice gratitude, you can never be angry, sad. You can never have a negative emotion. It's actually the exact opposite. I also have to thank you because you had me as a guest on your podcast, really sort of as Sharon says, so was getting started or early on in the trajectory of it was right after your first round of medical debt.

Yes. I think. Yep. So like February of 2021, something in that range. And since then you have very kindly offered me wise advice about podcasting. And I'm just really grateful to know you. Thank you so much for the time that you have spent giving me your wisdom. Happy to help. I've kind of become a podcasting nerd. So we have our own show. We help other people develop their shows.

And it's my favorite thing to talk about because of you, people like you who create these communities around one theme. And for you, you know, I think the very broad theme is your advocacy for media literacy, from being aware of what you're consuming. But then just helping other people is right up there with that. And you've cultivated this incredible community of people who want to not only make themselves better by learning and learning how to think for themselves, but also who want to help other people. And it's just such a, that's the wonderful thing about podcasting. So congratulations. Thank you. So true. And I also think it's really interesting because of course, one of the things I love to learn about is other people's jobs. I have always been my entire life fascinated by other people's jobs. Even if I don't have any intention of ever like, well,

I might like to pursue that. I still find what other people do very, very interesting and could spend the whole day talking to somebody else about their job. And so I think it's really interesting that you and Callie have developed in addition to this very successful podcast that you run, that you've developed another job for yourself, which is helping other people start their own podcasts. Yeah, we helped other people and they've all gone on to have fantastic success. So then we started helping companies. So now we have a company called 10 22 and we develop podcasts, really a complete, like kind of one-stop resource for somebody who wants to start a podcast.

And it's like I said, I've kind of become a podcasting nerd. So I love it. We can have a whole podcast about how to make a podcast. Yes. And there are lots of them out there. Well, I have a story that I want to share with you. That is one of those stories about mother nature, where it is just like, dang, you, this is one of those things that really illustrates the power of mother nature in a way that is just kind of a little mind blowing. I called them like brain tangle moments where you're like, dang, that is crazy. So this is about Alaska, state of

Alaska. Have you been to Alaska before? I've never been to Alaska. It's on my list. Okay. Alaska is an incredible place. It's incredible. Nobody ever goes there and it's like, incredible place. It's incredible. Nobody ever goes there and it's like, like that's nobody's reaction. Everybody is like, dang, wow, this really is the last frontier. You know what I mean? Just, just the number of mountains and glaciers and ocean and rivers. It's truly an amazing place, but I want to talk about something that happened sort of at the time when TV was just becoming, you know, a staple in everybody's homes. And the stories of this spread around the world in a way that perhaps issues or natural disasters had never been spread before. So this happened in 1964, and it was the largest earthquake ever recorded on planet Earth. In 1964, an earthquake struck Alaska's Prince William Sound, which is about 74 miles southeast of Anchorage, almost like a body of water.

Right. It was a 9.2 level earthquake. Wow. right? It was a 9.2 level earthquake on the Richter scale. And it was registered in almost every state in the United States with a small handful of like, they didn't register in Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Delaware, but otherwise it was felt in every single state. So a 9.2 is obviously absolutely massive. This wobbled the Seattle space needle. It caused rivers and lakes as far away as Louisiana to slosh. Wow. You know, like the water moved back and forth. So by the way, the Seattle Space Needle is 1200 miles away. And so if it is jiggling the Space Needle 1200 miles away, that gives you an idea about the force of this earthquake. And scientists later had this to say about it. It was so large that it caused the entire earth to ring like a bell.

Wow. Vibrations that were among the first of their kind ever recorded by modern instruments. And it caused large numbers of aftershocks, landslides, tsunamis. It killed about 140 people. And in 2022 dollars, it did about two point eight billion dollars worth of property damage. And this is, again, in Alaska in the 1960s, where it wasn't like they had they were developed like Manhattan.

Right. Yeah. You know, buildings are fewer and farther between and more modest in size. And so for that amount of damage to have occurred was absolutely incredible. But one of the good things that came out of this earthquake was the scientific discoveries that happened as a result. Prior to this earthquake, by the way, which was on March 27th, 1964 at 5.36 PM. So people are sitting down to dinner around that time. Several firsthand accounts talk about having the food literally just fly off of the stovetop, not just like jiggle or bubble over or drop off, but like become projectile. Many Alaskans said that they heard what sounded like a crunching sound.

Wow. And it was not a shaking that was up and down like you think about earthquakes. It was a side to side kind of shaking, like a grinding or a crunching sound, almost like those carnival fun houses. You know what I'm talking about? We go in and the earth is going, the ground is going like this. If you try not to twist your knee. One woman, by the way, who was sitting down to dinner with her family said, I watched a whole pan of beans fly into the air, the tray under the burner flew out. And then the tray landed underneath the pan of beans like this. And then they landed together on the ground and nothing spilt. Like it was some kind of cartoon, like the projectile force that was the likelihood that that would

happen. So this earthquake went on for four minutes. Oh my gosh. Which seems like an eternity when it's happening to you. And those four minutes were enough to rupture all kinds of water lines, sewer lines, gas lines, and led to massively widespread electrical failures, telephone failures. It buckled all kinds of railroad tracks. It split roads in half so much so that a road would open up and geysers of water would come out of it. It uprooted entire buildings. It tore apart entire houses. It swallowed cars. Docks that were on the shore were gone. The damage was like nothing the earth had ever seen before. The coastline sank eight feet down and caused other parts to rise almost 40 feet

in the air. And miles of the Alaskan coastline moved 50 feet towards the ocean. And so what then ended up happening was all of these forested areas that were then thrust 50 feet out into the ocean water. Those forested areas were then destroyed because the forest doesn't like saltwater. It doesn't want to have ocean waves flying over it. So after the initial, you know, four minutes of shaking went on, then there were days and days worth of aftershocks. And those aftershocks are ultimately, those aftershocks killed more people than the initial shaking did. than the initial shaking did. So there were like all of these tsunamis that would spring up at the ground, stop shaking, a tsunami would follow. And that would give Alaskans very, very little time to try to get to higher ground. You like either the ground is shaking or a tsunami is coming. And there was one village where a massive tsunami crushed the entire village four minutes after the earthquake ended.

That's no time to react, right? Like the earthquakes going on for four minutes. And then four minutes later, a tsunami hits your village, killed 23 people, which was a third of this village's population. Other tsunamis did huge amounts of damage to towns like Kodiak, Whittier, Seward, Alaska, and even in downtown Anchorage, which is the most developed place in Alaska, they had immense landslides to the point where the landslides caused some of the streets with businesses on them to drop nine feet. And nine feet is, you know, approximately the average size of an interior room in the United States. So imagine your building being here and then suddenly it's nine feet down.

And then what happens to all the contents and the structural integrity of your building? So things like, of course, all of the sidewalks, all of the roads, none of it could withstand this amount of damage. Statistically, it's quite likely that there was a family that moved to Alaska the week before this happened. And one of them didn't want to go. Either the husband or the wife didn't want to go. And let's make the husband the villain. And he says, we have to go. Either the husband or the wife didn't want to go. And let's make the husband the villain. And he says, we have to go. It's the new frontier. The riches of Alaska will change our families, you know, the course of our family's story for generations to come. The wife's like, all right,

we'll go for two years. They get there and they unpack the U-Haul and they're just settling in. And next thing you know, their beans are flying cartoon style across the kitchen. And when that four minutes ends, it's not the tsunami that that man needs to be worried about. There for a few, I told you so moments. Yes. Yes. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey.

We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! It's my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday.

Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. So there was one part of Anchorage that experienced soil liquefaction, where the soil behaves like liquid because it is being so violently shaken. that a suburban bluff broke off and plunged 2,000 feet into the bay, which took 75 homes with it. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine? 75 homes are just like cracked off and in the ocean. Unreal. Crazy.

Yes. Crazy. Crazy. off and in the ocean. Unreal. Crazy. Yes. Crazy. Crazy. The control tower at the Anchorage airport collapsed, killed an air traffic controller when the control tower collapsed. So the town of Valdez, which is also a small town on the Prince William Sound, this town had such incredible soil liquefaction that it triggered a local tsunami, which destroyed almost everything left standing, including Union Oil Company's oil tanks, which then started a massive fire and the entire town was leveled from the fire, the tsunami and the earthquake.

It's remarkable that so few people perished in this. Absolutely. Well, it speaks to how rurally, how few people lived there. If this had been anywhere in a population center, it would have been many, probably tens of thousands of people who died. Absolutely. So these aftershocks continued and continued and continued. Some of the aftershocks were over a 6.2 on the Richter scale. And the aftershocks caused, in addition to the landslides that were visible from coming from the mountains and cliffs, it caused underground landslides then triggered what is referred to as a tectonic tidal wave, where the tectonic plates of the earth shift so dramatically that it triggers all kinds of incredible geological events that most of us living in Atlanta, living in Minnesota, like we don't think about tectonic tidal waves. You know what I mean? Like that's not on our radar. As you describe this, I am, I'm having a flashback

to, I think the original Superman movie. And there was an earthquake scene in that movie where the earth split open and you can see it shows like the plates, you know, and this was, I think like in the 1970s or 80s movie. So the special effects were terrible, but with what you're describing and all of a sudden ground level, you could be standing here and your friend could be standing here and all of a sudden you're 30 feet higher and they're 10 feet lower, but you're still on standing on the same piece of ground. That's incredible. I, I, I totally know exactly what you're talking about. Like all the bad special effects where you're like, that would never happen. Well, it did happen. It happened in March of 1964. So then of course people are like, well, I guess we're gonna, we should rebuild. Like what should we do? And then the government was like, well, hold up. Maybe we should try to do some research to understand what caused this. Is there a way to prevent it?

How can we build things in the future that are not that where homes don't plummet, plummet 2000 feet off a cliff into the ocean? Like how, what don't rebuild until we have some time to figure out what actually happened. And so they appointed this team, the city of Anchorage, the Alaska's Housing Authority appointed a team of 40 scientists that included geologists and soil scientists, engineers to assess this damage and to figure out how can we rebuild in a better way moving forward. And the person who was in charge of all of the studies, all of the assessments was a woman named Dr. Ruth Schmidt.

And she was a geology professor at the University of Alaska. She was a total, her scientific career, she was a complete pioneer in her field of scientific research. Early on in her career, she taught map, and science to all male classes at Columbia. She was the first female grad student to ever teach at Columbia in this department, teach all men. She worked for the United States Geological Survey during World War II. She was part of a top secret military geology unit that prepped classified engineering geology reports. She had top secret security clearances. So she eventually resigned from the USGS when she had visited Alaska and fell in love with living in Alaska, and then eventually got a job as a geology professor at the University of Alaska, and then became the chair of the Department of Ge geology. So all of these Alaska men, right? Even today,

Alaska is a much higher percentage of men than women. All of these Alaska men were like, I'm an engineer. They're being bossed around by this one woman who's like, listen, I have a top secret government security clearance. Sit down, please. I can have the IRS audit you the day after tomorrow. I know people. People who are that smart are so fascinating to me because it's beyond, like that's just beyond learning. I feel like they are born with a part of their brain that can just process things. Me, if you're more than two

time zones away, we're not going to connect at the right time. Of course, all these developers want to come in, fix the ground problems, start rebuilding. And so this team of 40 scientists spent a month gathering information that they would hopefully be able to use to make the rebuilding process better and to build things in places that are not going to get hit by tsunamis, to build roads that can withstand small earthquakes, you know, that type of thing. So they had to then survey and study 185,000 square miles of Alaska, which is larger than the entire state of California, because that is how much of Alaska was disrupted significantly by this earthquake in 1964. And so these were some of the scientific discoveries that were made during this time

period. They began to understand about subduction zones. And subduction zones are places where two tectonic plates, you know, that are what make up the earth's crust, two tectonic plates meet, and then one bends underneath the other one, which this, this disruption here where one tectonic plate subducts underneath the other one is what caused this incredible earthquake. So before that, scientists didn't know about subduction zones. And they learned that the North American plate overrode the Pacific plate in that one part of Alaska. And that is what triggered this enormous 9.2 magnitude earthquake. And so this is what part of the report said. It says the 1964 earthquake was giant because of the large area of the fault that slipped during the earthquake and the large

amount of slip or relative motion between the opposite side. So not only was it how large of an amount of the tectonic plate that slipped underneath the other one, it was how strongly it slipped, like how far beneath that it went. So it was both of those things. It was big and it was also like an incredible amount of slippage that occurred in between these two tectonic plates. In fact, the tectonic plate slippage was between 30 and 60 feet. So we're not just talking about like two sheets of paper gliding over one another. We're talking 60 feet of movement underneath one of the other tectonic plates. That went on for four minutes. That went on for four minutes and it was a large surface area of the plates as well. So they then were able to identify what they refer

to as mega thrust earthquakes, which is what this was, this 9.2 earthquake. They began because they were able to understand what caused them. They could then study what they happened in the past and then maybe try to ascertain when they might happen in the future so that we don't kill people. So they drilled down 50 feet into the earth and began taking samples to process carbon dating and to identify when other of these types of earthquakes occurred in south central alaska and they found that over the last 5 500 years nine of these mega thrust earthquakes have occurred in that part of alaska and obviously there weren't a lot of buildings and things that you know work their history wasn't recorded over the last 5,500 years in the way in Alaska and the way it is today.

But the average amount of time span between the quakes was about 630 years. So hopefully that means it'll be another 500 plus years before another one of these happens again. But what it did do, the other thing that it caused was they developed a very significant network of earthquake monitoring equipment. So the minute there's any movement, alarms go off everywhere. That's right. Exactly. They developed something called shake maps.

They develop something called shake maps. And these shake maps show the distribution and the severity of earthquakes and the ground motion. And then they, of course, help to rebuild, they released this report. These villages rebuilt on higher ground, farther away from the ocean so that they would not be destroyed by tsunamis, so that the fires caused by the rupture of the oil tanks would not, you know, that wouldn't happen again. But this is the one thing that I thought was kind of funny. A lot of people were like, well, we're going to have to rebuild, but we might as well have a sense of humor about it. And so if you look at some of the signs that were put up on businesses that were temporarily closed, many of them were very cheeky the front door of a photo store in Anchorage. And the sign said, closed due to an early breakup. Like the people had broken up. Another one where the store had been like dropped into a sinkhole had a sign that said, we knew it was tough doing business in Alaska, but we didn't think we'd be this far in the hole. They were, they were the Alaskan earthquake victims were the original

memes. They were the original, that's right. Before anybody knew what a meme was. That's right. One, once they reestablished radio stations, which took a little while, then many of the stations played earthquake themed songs and they would have like a top 10 countdown of earthquake themed songs, like a whole lot of shaking going on, you know, like they, I'm sure you and your previous career, Jeff could have developed the top 10 earthquake themed songs. Yes. Yes. And I'm sure whenever you try to have a sense of humor about something intense like that, there's always going to be one person in every village who's going to be screaming that it's not funny. And I and I would be the one answering the phone at the radio station. How do you find that funny?

Earthquakes are not funny. Right. funny. Earthquakes are not funny. Right. Which they aren't. But if you're, you know, Pizza Hut franchise has just fallen down a cliff. You have a couple ways you can react. Yeah. You might as well make a joke about it. You might as well find the upside. There you go. There you go. the upside. There you go. There you go. Yes. Well, there was also one other funny thing that I found interesting about Ruth Schmidt, where they were studying, you know, doing all their studies about these mega thrust earthquakes. And a year after this March 1964 earthquake, there was a huge aftershock almost a year after a huge aftershock. And she was leading at the time, leading a small research team at a glacial lake near Anchorage.

And they had driven a snowmobile on this frozen lake and they were drilling holes in the ice and ice was about three feet thick and they were studying sedimentation and like all kinds of geology things that i don't understand like they probably weren't even working that was probably for fun that was probably a hobby oh sedimentation on port glacier and your anchorage hey you want to grab a couple bottles of wine and head out to the three foot uh frozen lake and drill into it to look at the sediment? Yeah. Sounds good. I mean, call some friends. You want a driver? Should I? Who's the designated driver? So they get out there and one of these huge aftershocks struck and they're standing on a frozen lake with three feet of ice. And the aftershock was strong enough that it completely shook the water underneath the ice and they were having trouble maintaining their balance and not falling into the lake, which if they had fallen in, they probably would have died because the ice surrounding the lake. The amount of snow that then began to fall from the avalanches

reduced the visibility so significantly, they could hardly see where they were going. And they had to abandon their snowmobile because the fissures in the ice were so significant that they couldn't drive their snowmobile off of the lake. And they tied themselves together with a rope in case one of them slipped underneath the ice they would be able to try to pull them out and they began to try to walk over the ice

off of the lake that was now if you just picture like these huge ice cliffs that had been formed and they finally made it to shore they found a cabin that had been occupied by railroad workers. And they were finally able to radio authorities of like, we need like a helicopter. Yeah. We need to get out of here, please. And what is the likelihood that the state's like head earthquake scientist gets trapped on a lake during the middle of an earthquake. And then the avalanche.

I mean, again, that's like a bad disaster movie. The avalanches are so significant. You can't even see in front of you. Tie us together. I feel like if that was in a bad disaster movie and I'm one of the showrunners, I look at the script and go, okay, you know what? Ruth on the lake tying herself to other people. Nobody believes that. You've gone too far.

It's like Sharknado. Yeah. Nobody thinks that's real. No. And why don't you have a polar bear drag them to safety while we're at it? Do you have, could Santa Claus fly in with his magical sleigh to rescue them? That'd be a great end to this movie. Yes. Isn't that crazy though? What a great story. Our suburban Atlanta homes. We don't think about mega thrust earthquakes with 60 foot subduction zones.

loads it just but my question when you with a story like this are you are there so many stories like this in existence that you will ever run out of stories no never never if it was a movie and you were working on it and then at the end it was like and they had to tie themselves together and the avalanche and the railroad workers, the helicopter. Nope. That's not believable anymore. You've gone too far. Oh, this is really fun. Jeff, you are fantastic. You're a fantastic guest. I'm glad we connected. Congratulations again on all the podcast success. I'm so happy for you and keep doing what you're doing, helping people because it's so cool to watch. Thank you. And tell everybody where to find you online and where to find your podcast. The podcast is called The Upside with Callie and Jeff, and I spend too much

time on Instagram. So if you're trying to find me, it's Jeff Dollar on Instagram, J-E-F-F-D-A-U-L-E-R. And if you're interested in developing a podcast, reach out to me there. The name of our company is 1022 and it's all spelled out and it's all one word. Oh, thank you so much for doing this. This is fantastic. Thank you for asking me.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories

or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.