Dr George Plafker (US Geological Survey) first went to Lituya Bay in southern Alaska with his colleague, Don Miller in 1953. They were surveying for oil.
‘We didn’t find any petroleum in Lituya Bay but what we did find was something that happened on a cataclysmic scale and we spent a large part of our time trying to understand it.’
What these scientists discovered in the 50s was the evidence for a previously unknown force of destruction. The evidence lay not in the rocks but in the trees.
‘One thing that was very peculiar was the fact that mature forest did not extend all the way down to the shoreline as was true almost everywhere else in this general area. Instead there were bands of young trees below mature forest and the line at which the trees of different ages joined we call the trim line.’
They suspected the surviving trees from just above the trim line might contain evidence of what had happened many years earlier.
‘We cut selected trees, took samples from those slices and sent them to the Juneau Forestry Research Lab.’
It was confirmed from the test that something must have hit the tree very hard on one side. What had happened in Lituya Bay seemed inexplicable. Whatever is was had produced a wave not 10 metres, but 150 metres high. Whatever had caused it, it certainly wasn’t an earthquake. The scientists left frustrated about the whole thing and did not expect to ever learn the answer to the problem. Five years later the rare phenomenon was to strike again and this time there were witnesses to what we now know as a tsunami.
Howard Ulrich: ‘The date was July 9th 1958. We came to Lituya Bay about 8 o’clock in the evening. My son was with me.’
Sonny Ulrich: ‘I was eight years old at the time and being a child like I was halfway asleep as well.’
Howard: ‘Approximately 10.15pm there was a large rumbling noise from up the head of the bay.’
Sonny: ‘It was like a big loud noise from the direction of the mountains.’
Howard: ‘There was a slight pause. I thought that everything was over with, but some movement up there caught my attention out of the corner of my eye and so I looked directly up there, and what I observed was like an atomic explosion. After this big flash came a huge wave. It looked like a big wall of water.’
Sonny: ‘He threw me a life preserver and said son, start praying.’
Howard: ‘You’re looking at death and this is exactly my first thought.’
Sonny: ‘When the wave hit us I did feel the boat all of a sudden start shooting up skywards.’
Howard: ‘I had 40 fathoms of anchor chain and it started running out off the boat. Came to the end of the 40 fathoms and just snapped it like a string and then we were free but we were still on the front of the wave. We were swept up over the land and up above the trees. That’s where I assumed that we were going to end up.’
The Ulriches were lucky. They rode the wave as it swept them above the trees and washed them back into the bay. Two other boats weren’t as fortunate. They were carried by the wave into the open sea where they were wrecked.
Coastguard radio: ‘Has there been a first-hand report from any of the boats up there?
If there’s any other boats here, I don’t think they made it. I don’t see’em and I don’t hear’em. God what an awful sight. You ought to see it in there. Something like the end of the world.’
