HISTORY OF A TSUNAMI — ROBERTS 329 



Mrs. Walton forever. Virgil Mann's geologists may well have been 

 wishing they had moved earlier to the cabin on Cenotaph Island, 

 farther from the center of the disturbance. The Canadian moun- 

 taineers strolled the streets of Juneau a day ahead of their expecta- 

 tions, unaware of the debt they owed their pilot for his weather 

 worries. The beginnings of panic in Juneau's gently swaying Capitol 

 Theater were stilled by the authoritative command rising above the 

 soundtrack, "Keep your seats !" 



Public consternation and damage occurred over a 400,000 square 

 mile area reaching such scattered places as Anchorage, Cordova, and 

 Ketchikan. In Petersburg people ran to the streets. Landslides 

 were seen in Warm Springs Bay, 100 miles south on Baranof Island, 

 The fishing village of Pelican on Chichagof Island saw several hurt in 

 the falling of objects, and heavy losses of equipment. One hundred 

 miles to the east, near Juneau, a chimney toppled, bells rang, and a 

 sandbar was seen "shaking like jelly." The Alaska Communications 

 System had six cable breaks due to some kind of submarine upheavals 

 in the Haines- Skagway area, and one at Wrangell, distant a surpris- 

 ing 250 miles from the quake. At Seattle the Coast and Goedetic 

 Survey's strong-motion seismograph in the Federal Building re- 

 corded more than an inch of back-and- forth motion in the foundations 

 of the city, and 20 musicians in an orchestra shell floating on Seat- 

 tle's Green Lake, more than 1,000 miles from Fairweather's broken 

 rocks, were shaken by a 5-minute series of oscillations — possibly an 

 alltime distance record for human sensing of an earthquake. With- 

 out doubt the most remote commotion of all was created when the 

 Survey's tidal wave warning system went into operation after a 

 minor sea wave was reported from the Sitka tide-gaging station. A 

 public warning of a possible tidal wave in Hawaii, though later seen 

 to be a false alarm, caused waves of excitement and traffic jams as 

 people fled low-lying areas. Of more lasting concern was the dif- 

 ficulty, back in Alaska, of salmon seining through masses of dead 

 halibut, cod, and octopuses, their carcasses drifting among uncounted 

 stripped and barkless logs, masses of ice, and other debris which 

 cluttered the area for days. 



At the moment of Fairweather's rupture the springing of the torn 

 rocks to less strained positions sent forth waves of vibrant motion 

 that traveled the surface layers and the deep interior of the entire 

 earth, arriving in due time at successively more distant seismograph 

 stations, where delicately suspended instruments were set into respon- 

 sive swinging. The floating orchestra pit at Seattle was in effect a 

 giant earthquake detector — possibly the hugest on record. The 

 waves included pressure variations of the type of sound waves in the 

 air, sidewise jerks like the kink that travels a tightrope when it is 



