YSM Issue 91.1

Science in the Spotlight
The Great Quake
By Vikram Shaw
IMAGE COURTESY OF USGS
5/5
At 5:36 p.m. on Good Friday, March 27, 1964,
a violent shaking disrupted a peaceful Friday
night in the village of Chenega, Alaska. The
villagers, primarily Alutiiq natives, noticed
the water level of their cove rapidly recede, curiously
exposing the bottom of the ocean floor. The villagers
knew what it meant, but many of them did not have enough
time to get out. Moments later, a thirty-five-foot-high wall of
water came barreling towards them.
In a compelling tale of disaster, resilience, and scientific discovery,
New York Times journalist and Yale graduate Henry
Fountain tells the story of the biggest recorded earthquake
in the history of North America in his new book, The Great
Quake. After Fountain wrote an article in the New York Times
about the quake’s 50th anniversary, an editor at a New York
book publisher told him that the story sounded like a good
book. Fountain quickly mobilized, and by the end of 2015, he
had visited Alaska for a couple of months and completed most
of his research. “I wanted to tell the narrative of the people affected
and tell the tale of science through the eyes of George,”
Fountain said.
George Plafker, a geologist who started with little knowledge
of earthquakes but a lot of knowledge of the Alaskan
backcountry, was one of the main players behind the scientific
breakthroughs that the quake catalyzed. At the turn of the
century, earthquake science was young and misguided. Eduard
Suess, for example, put forth the leading earthquake theory of
the time by comparing the earth to a drying apple that would
wrinkle as it shrank. A small minority of scientists instead favored
the emerging ideas—rejected by most—that would later
become known as plate tectonics. It was not until after the
Alaskan quake, however, that Plafker helped settle the debate.
The book tells the stories of the two communities that were
hit the hardest by the quake: Valdez, a small costal town that
arose from the Gold Rush, and Chenega, a village of around
eighty native Alaskans and an American schoolteacher. Following
these two villages through the disaster, the book is both
exciting to read and informative. Fountain makes sure that no
details are spared when it comes to the moments leading up
to and just after the quake. He also details the months on end
spent by many geologists, including Plafker, who dedicated
their lives to understanding what happened.
Fountain closes his book with a sobering reminder: by several
estimates, including Plafker’s, the Pacific Northwest is due
for a megathrust earthquake—the same kind that occurred in
Alaska. “The Northwest will probably have a quake like it in
the next 50 years,” Fountain said. “They’re all expecting it to
happen.”
www.yalescientific.org
March 2018
Yale Scientific Magazine
39