University of Alaska (2018, July 13) 60 Years Ago: The 1958 Earthquake and Lituya Bay Megatsunami. It’s also possible that big landslides are becoming more common as glaciers retreat, removing support from the lower slopes of steep valleys. They felt the quake and watched as an 800-foot stretch of the island's beach disappeared into the bay along with, To Miller, the destruction he saw was clearly the work of a giant wave, but its height seemed unbelievable. The mountaineers’ pilot came early, on the evening of July 9, forcing a mad scramble to leave before nightfall. Left: Decades after the tsunami, damage to the edges of the bay (the light green areas) can clearly be seen on this Landsat image. He found that all evidence of previous tsunamis had been destroyed by this one. There were 2 incredibly lucky fishermen in their boat on the Bay when the megatsunami happened, and they lived to tell about it. Proving this would require surveying the bottom of Gilbert Inlet to measure and date the layers of sediment. This 7.8Mw earthquake was characterized as extreme and triggered many rockslides accounting to three million cubic meters that fell into the Lituya Bay … On the night of July 9, 1958, an earthquake along the Fairweather Fault in the Alaska Panhandle loosened about 40 million cubic yards (30.6 million cubic meters) of rock high above the northeastern shore of Lituya Bay. But Miller had seen driftwood and rocks strewn across the slopes at the top of the trimline, and the trees that had not been washed into the bay all lay on the ground pointing westward, as the wave had traveled. This mass of rock plunged from an altitude of approximately 3000 feet (914 meters) down into the waters of Gilbert Inlet (see map below). The boat crashed down and foundered on the far side of the spit, but Swanson and his wife Vivian were able to escape the wreck in their skiff with just the clothes they were wearing and a chair for a paddle. Opposite this scar, on the spur that forms the corner between Gilbert Inlet and the main part of the bay, pilot Kenneth Loken flew alongside a sharp new trimline below which the trees and earth had been stripped away to clean bedrock. USC Tsunami Research Group: 1958 Lituya Bay Tsunami, http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/alaska/1958/webpages/index.html, Disaster Pages of Dr. George PC: “The Mega-Tsunami of July 9, 1958 in Lituya Bay, Alaska”, http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Tsunami1958LituyaB.html, http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AlaskaScienceForum/article/giant-waves-lituya-bay, BBC Nature: Mega Tsunami – Alaskan Super Wave – Amazing Survival, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN6EgMMrhdI. displacing far more water than just the volume of the rock. Like Paddy Sherman's climbers and the fishermen who survived the wave, it helps to be lucky. After a minute or so the wave reached Cenotaph Island, breaking as it came around the left side but smooth-faced on the right. Scar at the head of Lituya Bay and wave damage on the north shore, from southwest of … The Fairweather fault runs directly through Gilbert and Crillon inlets, which form the crosspiece at the top of Lituya Bay's distinctive "T" shape. The bay was noted in 1786 by Jean-François de Lapérouse, who named it Port des Français. Miller wrote that his observations were "widely doubted both on theoretical grounds and on the basis of aerial observations and study of photographs by others." There, a collapsing bluff started a wave that killed four people and caused much damage in the village of, . The seven miles long and two miles narrow Lituya Bay. Miller first assumed that the wave had been caused by the large movements along the fault in the inlets. The barge heaved, and Miller watched as rocks fell from high cliffs into the bay. Lituya Bay offers the only sheltered anchorage for a long stretch of Southeast Alaska coast, but the bay itself is hardly safe. The Lituya Bay incident only killed 5 people, as it happened at a rugged part of Alaska’s southern strip. Don Miller, a USGS, Above: The stump of a living tree broken off by the wave at the mouth of Lituya Bay, about 7 miles from where the wave originated. The strike-slip earthquake took place on the Fairweather Fault and triggered a rockslide of 40 million cubic yards (30 million cubic meters and about 90 million tons) into the narrow inlet of Lituya Bay, Alaska. However, Steven Ward and Simon Day of UC Santa Cruz felt that the Gilbert Inlet slide alone could not account for the size of the wave that swept through the outer bay or the amount of material deposited at the bottom of Gilbert Inlet. Cenotaph Island is at center. Unfortunately, there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent any of the five deaths. This was followed by an explosion of water in Gilbert Inlet, which gave birth to a wave that Ulrich described as “the smallest part of the whole thing” even though it was at least 100 feet high. Six years later, the magnitude 9.2 Great Alaska earthquake would trigger landslide tsunamis across southern Alaska, accounting for many of the deaths from that earthquake. The boat rode over the crest of the wave, down its shallower tailing side, and was carried by a returning wave towards the center of the bay. When Miller returned to study the effects of the wave, he measured the highest trimline more precisely at 1,720 feet. In the morning, he learned of the disaster in Lituya Bay and chartered a float plane to take him there. On October 27, 1936, a megatsunami occurred in Lituya Bay in Alaska with a maximum run-up height of 490 feet (149 m) in Crillon Inlet at the head of the bay. The lighthouse at Harbor Point and the cabin on Cenotaph Island were both gone without a trace. Twenty-one of his men perished in the tidal current in the bay. It caused significant geologic changes in the region, including areas that experienced uplift and subsidence. Fortunately, both of these slides ran out onto glaciers instead of into water. All five deaths occurred in the water, which speaks to the nature of earthquake hazards in Southeast. People living in coastal communities should understand how megatsunamis happen and what to do if they are near the water when they feel an earthquake or witness a large slide (hint: run uphill). There, a collapsing bluff started a wave that killed four people and caused much damage in the village of Nuugaatsiaq. Up on the northeast wall, Miller spotted a huge landslide scar with cascades of rock still running down it. From there it raced toward the mouth of the bay—and the fishing boats—with some side-to-side sloshing that accounted for variations in the height of the trimline along the length of the bay. Cenotaph Island, a large wooded mound at the center of the bay, is named for the 21 members of the La Perouse expedition who drowned in 1798 after capsizing in the tidal bore at the bay’s shallow entrance. Their 2010 paper describes a possible double slide, where the destruction of the toe of Lituya Glacier triggered a much larger, slower submarine slide of glacial deposits after the initial rockslide. A full-grown Alaskan brown bear on the rocky slope looked the size of a mite. The red arrow shows the location of the landslide, and the yellow arrow shows the location of the high point of the wave sweeping over the headland. Alaska, Ecuador and Peru saw fairly high activity. Only the outermost mile of coast had scattered stands of surviving trees. Miller wrote that his observations were ". Melting Alaska glacier could unleash ‘mega-tsunami’ hundreds of feet tall THIS year ... 16 times more debris and 11 times more energy than Alaska's 1958 Lituya Bay landslide and … Don Miller, the geologist, was on a USGS barge in Glacier Bay when the earthquake struck. Some 27,000 people died. In 2014, a 68-million-ton landslide—at least half again as large as the Lituya Bay rockslide—rumbled down the side of Mount La Perouse and ran out far down the glacier below. The impact generated a local tsunami that crashed against the southwest shore… On July 9, 1958, an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.7-8.3 triggered an enormous rockfall in a remote bay along the Gulf of Alaska. All five deaths occurred in the water, which speaks to the nature of earthquake hazards in Southeast. Find Lituya Bay in Google Earth and you'll see the marks today. Once over the bay, they could not land because its entire surface was strewn with tree trunks and giant blocks of ice. We develop seismic policies and share information to promote programs intended to reduce earthquake related losses. In 2001, Hermann Fritz and Willi Hager attempted to replicate the initial wave's 1,720-foot run-up using a pneumatic landslide generator to blast simulated rockslides into at 1:675 scale model of Gilbert Inlet. A non-profit earthquake consortium for the western states. Scientists fear the resulting event could happen "within the next year" and would drastically outclass the 1958 Lituya Bay Mega Tsunami in Alaska. It is 14.5 km long and 3.2 km wide at its widest point. Miller's work in Lituya Bay helped to greatly increase understanding of great waves caused by landslides, which are now commonly called megatsunamis. Over the next three weeks, the climbers made the, The mountaineers’ pilot came early, on the evening of July 9, forcing a mad scramble to leave before nightfall. The combination of steep slopes rising directly out of the sea, rapid erosion from glaciers and heavy coastal precipitation, and frequent earthquakes all contribute to frequent landslides capable of causing tsunamis. Miller was not around to study these, as he had drowned on the Kiagna River with a young assistant in 1961. Education is our best tool. Unfortunately, landslide tsunamis are especially difficult disasters to prepare for. Two other boats also were anchored in the bay that night; those four people managed to ride out the wave. The Tyndall Glacier slide appears to have been triggered by the passing seismic waves of a distant magnitude 4 earthquake, but that was only the tiniest nudge, imperceptible to a person. But a record-breaking tsunami of a different sort occurred in 1958, in a remote part of Alaska known as Lituya Bay — and was witnessed by only six people, two of whom died. This is a sampling of small clips of 8 mm film transferred to DVD. For most of the bay, destruction below the trimline was absolute. As the waves calmed, Ulrich piloted through the debris and made a harrowing escape through the shallow entrance at around 11pm. The site of the mountaineers' camp was scoured down to bedrock. Two people fishing in the bay were killed, but another boat amazingly managed to ride the wave. Make It Happen Memories. Scientists were puzzled for some time by the sheer size of the wave, because they could not identify a mechanism that could have created such a massive reaction. By 9pm they were in the air, leaving behind three fishing boats that had come into the steep-walled bay for the night. The undersea slide that, So far we have been lucky to have few human impacts from recent landslide tsunamis in Alaska, but a disaster in Greenland in 2017 should serve as a warning. The undersea slide that killed one in Skagway in 1994 was not triggered by an earthquake at all, but by an extreme low tide. Our tsunami inundation maps include landslide tsunami scenarios for some of Alaska's most at-risk communities, showing which areas are likely to be safe and which are not. It does, however, highlight the importance of documenting such events for posterity, and to consider such extreme events when making development decisions for coastal areas in areas with high seismicity or vulnerability to tsunamis. Conferences, Workshops and Board Meetings, 2015 WSSPC Registration (Payment By Check), Join/Renew Affiliate Membership (Credit Card), Engineering, Construction and Building Codes Committee. (Photo: USGS), The spur that forms the corner between Gilbert Inlet and the main body of Lituya Bay. The Sunmore (S) and Badger (B) were anchored in Anchorage Cove, while the Edrie (E) was anchored in the small cove behind the Paps hills. 1958 had only 368 deaths. Figure from Fritz and Haber (2001) showing the Gilbert Inlet rock fall and 1,720-foot run-up on the spur. Two were rescued from a dinghy after their boat sank, the others managed to pilot out of the bay on their own power, but at great risk, as the water continued to swirl unpredictably, and was littered with millions of tree trunks that had been ripped from the banks. Two of the deaths were the Wagners, who had tried to flee Lituya Bay aboard the Sunmore; they were never seen again. (Photo: USGS). The earthquake struck at 10:16pm. When an earthquake strikes...Drop, Cover and Hold on! We develop seismic policies and share information to promote programs intended to reduce earthquake-related losses. (Map from Miller, Great Waves in Lituya Bay, Alaska), During the earthquake, the bay side of Gilbert and Crillon inlets moved about 20 feet northwest relative to the northeast wall that forms the head of the bay. Miller wrote that the hillsides were dripping with water while the streams that drained small lakes above the bay were running down in swollen torrents. geologist, had already documented a total of three other major tsunamis at this location; he flew out to the site the next day, and although he was able to take photos from the air, it was another three weeks before it was safe enough to land to document the destruction. UAF is an AA/EO employer and educational institution and prohibits illegal discrimination against any individual. The landslide scar, which was high above Gilbert Inlet on a near-vertical slope, appeared to have dumped about 40 million tons of rock into the inlet all at once. In other words, 60 years after the Lituya Bay tsunami, we are still working out how it happened. Ultimately, it was discovered that a piece of rock, 2,400 feet by 3,000 feet, and 300 feet thick, had dislodged from the face of the northern wall of the inlet, and fallen 2,000 feet into the bay. (Photo: USGS), South side of Lituya Bay, soon after the tsunami. The Wagners on the Sunmore reacted first, raising their anchor and making for the entrance of the bay. On July 10, 1958, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred on the Fairweather Fault in southeast Alaska. It also caused a rockfall in Lituya Bay that generated a wave with a maximum height of 1,720 feet – the world’s largest recorded tsunami. On July 10, 1958, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred on the Fairweather Fault in southeast Alaska. Hermann Fritz and Willi Hager (2001), "Lituya Bay Case: Rock Slide Impat and Wave Run-Up", Don J. Miller (1960), "Giant Waves at Lituya Bay, Alaska", Don Tocher (1960), "The Alaska Earthquake of July 10, 1958: Movement on the Fairweather Fault and Field Investigation of Southern Epicentral Region", Steven N. Ward and Simon Day (2010), "The 1958 Lituya Bay Landslide and Tsunami - A Tsunami Ball Approach", Lituya Bay (at center left) offers the only sheltered anchorage for a long stretch of Southeast coast. The Fairweather fault does not produce the largest earthquakes, but the danger from these earthquakes is increased by the combination of steep slopes, unconsolidated soils, narrow fjords, and a population that lives and works by the sea. They felt the quake and watched as an 800-foot stretch of the island's beach disappeared into the bay along with three of their friends. A second Berkeley researcher, R.L. That was not the case in 2015, when 180 million tons of rock—the largest non-volcanic landslide ever documented in North Amerca—into Taan Fjord, an inlet of Icy Bay. The Landslide Blog (2008, July 9) Lituya Bay—50 Years On. Damage from the 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami can be seen in this oblique aerial photograph of Lituya Bay, Alaska as the lighter areas at the shore where trees have been stripped away. A total of five people were killed in the event: three people died on Khantaak Island at the mouth of Yakutat Bay when the beach they were standing on subsided 100 feet below sea level; the other two died when their boat was sunk by the tsunami at Lituya Bay. The largest event was a magnitude 8.3 earthquake in Russia in November. At approximately 10:15 PM Pacific Time, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck the Fairweather Fault in Southeast Alaska triggering a massive landslide that caused 30 million cubic metres of rock and ice to fall into the narrow inlet of Lituya Bay. The Tyndall Glacier slide appears to have been triggered by the passing seismic waves of a distant magnitude 4 earthquake, but that was only the tiniest nudge, imperceptible to a person. Some of the material landed on the toe of Tyndall Glacier, but enough of it slammed into the water to generate a megatsunami with 600-foot run-up. From variations in the height of the trimline, Miller inferred that part of the wave had washed over the spur while the rest of it crossed the bay diagonally and struck the south side near Mudslide Creek, creating the second highest trimline. Unfortunately, the qualities that make Lituya Bay so prone to landslide tsunamis are found in bays and fjords throughout Southeast Alaska. Obviously, megatsunamis will happen again, and possibly without warning. 1936: Lituya Bay, Alaska. Most of this total came from earthquakes in Iran and Ecuador Overall ... 5 people were killed in the 1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska earthquake and megatsunami. Still, living with the danger of megatsunamis is part of the cost of working and playing in one of the world's most breathtaking landscapes. Southeast Alaska Earthquake. I think I have resolved the issue that I mentioned three years ago by including the words "Alaska" and "earthquake" in the title (a few sources that I looked at labeled the earthquake the "1958 Alaska earthquake"). The tsunami was triggered by an 8.3 magnitude earthquake, triggering … Nine days later, descending after a blizzard suffocated one of the men in his tent, the survivors found the landscape of snow and ice deeply altered, and no sign of the lower camp where they had cached their snowshoes. So far we have been lucky to have few human impacts from recent landslide tsunamis in Alaska, but a disaster in Greenland in 2017 should serve as a warning. © 2009-2021 Western States Seismic Policy Council. Fittingly, a research vessel named after Miller served as George Plafker's base of operations for some of his work studying changes to the Alaska coastline after the 1964 earthquake--work that would greatly advance understanding of plate tectonics and especially subduction. In some respects, it created a similar reaction to that which would have occurred if an asteroid had fallen into the water. Miller could not explain how the earthquake had caused such an enormous wave, but he was certain that it had. Lituya Bay Oblique aerial photograph of Lituya Bay in the summer of 1958. Six years later, the magnitude 9.2 Great Alaska earthquake would trigger landslide tsunamis across southern Alaska, accounting for many of the deaths from that earthquake. Ward and Day describe how the initial rockfall could have triggered a second submarine slide of glacial sediment capable of generating the wave observed in the outer bay. The wave didn’t travel far, as it struck land almost immediately. Wiegel, built a 1:1000 scale model of Lituya Bay and found that he could more or less recreate Miller's observations given a large enough mass of rocks falling as a unit into Gilbert Inlet at high velocity. Philip Fradkin (2001), Wildest Alaska, University of California. Bill Swanson described his boat lodged bow-first near the crest of the wave, as if surfing it backwards, as he looked down at treetops far below him. All told, five people were killed by the earthquake and subsequent wave in Lituya Bay. Miller believed he had identified four such waves over the last century, but he did not know their cause. Damage from the 1958 megatsunami … It caused significant geologic changes in the region, including areas that experienced uplift and subsidence. In Gilbert Inlet, which branches north at a right angle from the head of the bay, Miller found that a stream delta had vanished and 1,300 feet of ice had sheared off the end of Lituya Glacier. A flying boat dropped Paddy Sherman’s mountaineering expedition at Lituya Bay on June 17, 1958. The wave was brought on by an enormous 8.3 magnitude earthquake that hit the Fairweather Fault and caused a massive earth landslide. Howard Ulrich had brought his seven-year-old son along on the Edrie. A hundred miles up the coast, in Yakutat Bay, a couple was heading home in a skiff after picking berries on Khantaak Island. World's Biggest Tsunami: The largest recorded tsunami with a wave 1720 feet tall in Lituya Bay, Alaska. This was so big that it is known scientifically as a megatsunami. Wiegel's and Fritz's research reinforced Miller's observations as well as Ulrich's eyewitness account of the massive wave in Gilbert Inlet. It also caused a rockfall in Lituya Bay that generated a wave with a maximum height of 1,720 feet – the world’s largest recorded tsunami. A 1,720 foot tsunami towered over Lituya Bay, a quiet fjord in Alaska, after an earthquake rumbled 13 miles away. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake had begun near Cross Sound and ruptured 125 miles of the Fairweather fault, from Palma Bay to Icy Bay. Scientists named these waves megatsunami 1. Scientists who had not seen the effects of the wave firsthand argued that above 300 feet, the soil and trees must have slid into the bay during the earthquake. April 1, 1946: The April Fools tsunami, triggered by an earthquake in Alaska, killed 159 people, mostly in Hawaii. Accessed November 20, 2020. By 9pm they were in the air, leaving behind three fishing boats that had come into the steep-walled bay for the night. The hat brim is 12 inches in diameter. In the 1950s, a sturdy cabin on the island served as a sometime base camp for Don Miller, a geologist who had taken an interest in Lituya Bay’s other great hazard. The biggest tsunami in present times struck at Lituya Bay, Alaska on July 9, 1958. The 1958 cataclysm was triggered by a … The four eyewitnesses to the wave in Lituya Bay itself all survived and described it as … To Miller, the destruction he saw was clearly the work of a giant wave, but its height seemed unbelievable. The Edrie, meanwhile, was caught in a mess of disordered, 20-foot chop filled with ice and logs. The other three deaths occurred eighty miles north, on a beach on Khantaak Island. In 2016, an entire mountainside failed and ran out onto the Lamplugh Glacier. Lituya Bay is a fjord located on the Fairweather Fault in the northeastern part of the Gulf of Alaska. Distinct trimlines—demarcations in the vegetation with young growth below and old growth above—showed where unusually large waves had torn through the bay and run up hillsides as high as 490 feet. Miller, USGS/Wikimedia Commons). Over the next three weeks, the climbers made the second ascent of Mount Fairweather, a first ascent of an unnamed peak, and had come within 200 feet of the first ascent of Mount Lituya. (Image: Geology.com/NASA Landsat) It’s also possible that big landslides are becoming more common as glaciers retreat, removing support from the lower slopes of steep valleys. Unfortunately, the qualities that make Lituya Bay so prone to landslide tsunamis are found in bays and fjords throughout Southeast Alaska. This is the site of the 1,720-foot run-up, the highest ever documented. Two hundred miles to the south, underwater landslides in Lynn Canal severed ACS's Juneau-Skagway cable in four places. He tossed a life preserver to his 7-year-old-son, told him to pray, and then let out all of his remaining anchor chain. 1958 Lituya Bay This earthquake is also remembered because of the mega tsunami that followed it, killing lots of people. On July 9, 1958, the largest wave in modern history occurred in Lituya Bay, on the northern Southeast Alaska coast about halfway between Cape Spencer and Yakutat. Large earthquakes sometimes start the landslides that cause megatsunamis, as in Lituya Bay, but not always. The Sunmore had vanished, and the Wagners were never found. The move that I just made looks like this: 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami → 1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska earthquake and megatsunami. It was felt from Seattle to Whitehorse, though most of the structural damage was confined to Yakutat.

Miller, United States Geological Survey. The earthquake was so strong, and the tsunami came so quickly, that there was not time to get to a safe place. This trimline is 180 feet above sea level and 1000 feet from the high tide mark. During the earthquake, the southwest side of the inlets moved about 20 feet northwest relative to the opposite shore, on the other side of the fault. People living in coastal communities should understand how megatsunamis happen and what to do if they are near the water when they feel an earthquake or witness a large slide (hint: run uphill). Ulrich steered into the wave and the Edrie shot up its face, snapping the anchor chain and sending it whipping around the pilot house. Avalanches were coming down the mountains at the head of the bay. The hat brim is 12 inches in diameter. Three persons were killed in Lituya Bay, and two people were missing and presumed dead who were caught in the tsunami. They flew over rafts of logs fanning out in the open water as far as five miles from the mouth of the bay. In June 2016, pilot Paul Swanstrom followed a strange dust plume and found the aftermath of a more than 100-million-ton slide onto the Lamplugh Glacier. On July 9, 1958, an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.7-8.3 triggered an enormous rockfall in a remote bay along the Gulf of Alaska. Hence, there was little effect on human settlements. (Photo: Paul Swanstrom), A flying boat dropped Paddy Sherman’s mountaineering expedition at Lituya Bay on June 17, 1958. As the wall of water rushed down the inlet, Ulrich found that that his anchor was hopelessly stuck. Education is our best tool. In Yakutat, the earthquake damaged bridges and docks and knocked a water tower to the ground. Aerial photograph of Lituya Bay a few weeks after the 1958 tsunami. Slope stability assessments can help to identify potential slides before they happen, but this is expensive, and Southeast's thousands of miles of steep coastline make it impractical except in a small number of targeted locations. In Lituya Bay, fewer than five minutes passed between the earthquake and when the wave reached the boats. University of Alaska (2018, July 13) Lituya Bay. 11,300 feet up Mount St. Elias, another group of climbers felt the ground moving in waves as avalanches pounded down the slopes around them.

It also caused a rockfall in Lituya Bay that generated a wave with a maximum height of 1,720 feet – the world’s largest recorded tsunami. CONTRIBUTIONS TO GENERAL GEOLOGY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 354-C A timely account of the nature and possible causes of certain giant waves, with eyewitness reports of their destructive capacity UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFIC.E, WA:SHIN:GTON : 1960 This tsunami is analogous to the tallest ever recorded tsunami, which hit Lituya Bay, Alaska in 1958. This massive tremor triggered around 30.6 million cubic meters of rock to fall 3,000 feet into the Lituya Glacier, causing a torrent of displaced water to rear up and form a monstrous wave which, miraculously, only killed five people. Some of the material landed on the toe of Tyndall Glacier, but enough of it slammed into the water to, Large earthquakes sometimes start the landslides that cause megatsunamis, as in Lituya Bay, but not always. 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