Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami, I — Pararas-Carayannis 
305 
Fig. 2. Diagram of wave activity at Women’s Bay, Kodiak Island. (From visual observations made at 
Marginal Pier, Nyman Peninsula.) 
of the Kenai Peninsula, but these islands are 
inside the generating area. 
Yakatat, a coastal town 170 km southeast of 
Cape Yakataga, had a tide gauge in operation, 
and the marigram shows that a positive wave 
arrived first (Fig. 3). 
It is quite possible, therefore, that the first 
waves to arrive at Cape Yakataga had a differ- 
ent origin from that of the first waves to arrive 
at Yakatat. It could very well be that the Cape 
Yakataga waves traveled over the shallow por- 
tion of the shelf, whereas the Yakatat waves 
came from the open ocean. 
An interesting aspect of these two records is 
that of the difference in amplitude and period 
of the first waves to arrive at these two sites — 
which also supports the hypothesis of difference 
in origin (see Figs. 3 and 4). 
TSUNAMI GENERATED IN PRINCE WILLIAM 
SOUND 
The shallow continental shelf and the islands 
bordering the southern side of Prince William 
Sound, as well as the pattern of crustal displace- 
ments, confined the waves generated in this area 
to the Sound itself; very little energy escaped 
this closed region. Most of the energy was ex- 
pended in the narrow, deep fjords of the Sound, 
creating catastrophic waves and setting up reso- 
nating oscillations and surges that lasted for 
hours. In certain places maximum inundation 
occurred 5 or 6 hours later, at high tide. At 
Valdez, for example, the third wave came in at 
2300, March 27, and the fourth one at 0145, 
March 28 (Brown, 1964). This last wave took 
the form of a tidal bore and inundated the 
