Good Friday quake 1964

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Fourth Avenue in Anchorage
Landslide damage in the Turnagain Heights

The Good Friday quake , also known as the Great Alaska Quake , was the strongest single earthquake in US history to date . After the Valdivia earthquake in 1960 , it is the megathrust earthquake with the second highest magnitude since the beginning of the regular earthquake recordings carried out from around 1950.

It occurred on March 27, 1964 at 17:36 local time (28 March 03:36 UTC ) and had a torque magnitude of 9.2 M W . The epicenter was in Prince William Sound in south-central Alaska . Most of the property damage occurred in Anchorage , 120 kilometers northwest of the epicenter.

The quake killed 125 people, almost all of them from tsunamis that struck the fjords of Prince William Sound and the Kenai Peninsula and reached a maximum height of around 67 meters. Victims have also been reported from California and Oregon . The quake lasted nearly three minutes in Anchorage. Most of the destruction in the city was caused by landslides and massive land displacement. Almost every house near Turnagain Heights was destroyed by the quake.

In the 2016 novel The Smell of Other People's Houses by the American Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock , the quake plays an essential role, insofar as it plays a vital role for some of the young protagonists because of their father's death at sea.

literature

  • George Plafker : Tectonic deformation associated with the 1964 Alaska earthquake, Science, Volume 148, 1965, pp. 1675-1687
  • George Plafker: Tectonics of the March 27, 1964, Alaska Earthquake: US Geol. Surv. Prof. Paper 543 – I, 1969 (74 pages)
  • George Plafker: The Alaskan earthquake of 1964 and Chilean earthquake of 1960; Implications for arc tectonics and tsunami generation, J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 77, 1972, pp. 901-925.
  • National Research Council, Committee On The Alaska Earthquake (1971-73). The Great Alaska Earthquake Of 1964. Washington: National Academy of Sciences.

Web links

Commons : Good Friday Quake 1964  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Report of the US Geological Survey: The Great M9.2 Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami of March 27, 1964 usgs.gov. Accessed on May 10, 2020 (English)
  2. ↑ M 9.2 - 1964 Prince William Sound Earthquake, Alaska usgs.gov. Accessed on May 10, 2020 (English)
  3. ↑ Tsunami Event: Prince William Sound, AK. Tsunami data, National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA

Coordinates: 61 ° 1 ′ 12 ″  N , 147 ° 39 ′ 0 ″  W.