PERSONAL ACCOUNTS
The following is my
recollection of Friday, March 27, 1964.
It was 5:30 pm and I had just finished my
shower. I was planning a night out on the town since I had turned 20
yrs. old three days earlier. I was sitting in the barracks at the
Kodiak Naval Base reading the week old Oklahoma City Times. I barely
got through the front page and noticed a little shaking of the paper in
my hands. I dismissed it, thinking it was one of the sub hunters
revving it's engines at the nearby hangar. Suddenly the closed and
latched doors of the lockers in front of me sprang open. Myself and one
other seaman yelled simultaneously "it's an EARTHQUAKE".
The barracks and
showers were full of Seabees and Marines getting ready for the weekend
parties. Most were partially or completely naked. It was very hard to
remain on your feet as we all headed for the stairs at the same time.
We pretty much went down in a pile. I remember standing on the bottom
step of the doorway to the barracks and watching lightning on the
ground. The ground was alive. All around you and as far as you could
see the ground was splitting with cracks from as wide as an inch to
hairline cracks. The power poles were all swaying in unison. Water and
Gas lines were breaking underground all around. And at the same time
you felt like you were standing on a giant vibrator.
The one thing I
remember most while I was standing there in my shorts was where did all
the girls come from. We rarely saw a female on base. And there must
have been 8 or 10 screaming girls and women within a few yards of our
barracks. Never figured out where they came from. Of course liberty was
canceled and we were ordered to muster. The Seabees were in charge of
the Motor Pool on base. We provided services to the base in all phases
of transportation. As well as snow removal and road repair on the
Island. My first assigned task was to transport a squad of armed
Marines to the town of Kodiak. The first wave had hit and took out the
town. It took about an hour and a half to get there because of the
condition of the roads.
Rock slides had blocked
many areas and we had to clear the road before proceeding. When we
arrived I couldn't believe the destruction. The streets were littered
with everything from rifles to cash. Looting was already taking place.
The buildings that were on the waterfront were all displaced and in the
middle of what used to be the streets. Over the next 24 hours, the
tides became increasingly higher and higher. Soon the base power plant
was under water and we lost all power to the base.
Our entire Company
spent the next two weeks working 12 to 15 hour days doing whatever we
could to help anyone that needed it. I remember when the
C130 arrived from Seattle with the replacement power plant.
Word was that it took over two days to get it loaded and secured on the
plane and we had it unloaded and operational in about 18 hours.
When my tour of duty
was finished I was able to spend some time in Anchorage while on the
way back to the States. I have since been in another
earthquake while visiting California. Two is enough. I 'm glad I live
Texas. I am now 63 years old and I plan to drive the Alcan Highway next
summer. Sure hope the ground ain't shakin'.
Thanks for the
opportunity to share this experience, James Boyd Midlothian,
Texas
|
I was 10 years old and
my family lived on 8th Street in Anchorage. I remember when the quake
hit I ran out the back door, circled the block, and all of the parked
cars were slamming back and forth into each other. My dad was in the
doorway of our house and yelling for me to come to him, I was just
panicked and running down the street. I guess I thought that there was
somewhere that was not shaking. The Four Seasons Apartments were just
down the street, I remember that when it fell there was a huge mushroom
cloud like we had seen in school films about atomic bombs. To this very
day, the smallest earthquake scares me spitless. My older sister was
just entering the doors at Penneys when some high school friends drove
down the road and called to her and her friend. The front of Pennys
came down right where they had been standing. They barely escaped being
victims. I have a bunch of old newspapers from those days that my Dad
left me. I have no idea what to do with them.
Bill Woosley
|
I was 9 when the quake
hit. But I clearly remember where I was & what I was doing. It
seemed the earth would never stop shaking. I was in a basement
& had a hard time getting up the stairs. I lived on Cherry Hill
- with a bunch of other military families. I remember the "100" tremors
a day afterwards.
Peg
|
I was 18 and a resident of Fairbanks and had never been
to Anchorage before, but was there attending the Community College
taking a two month class in surveying and soils testing. I was staying
in a boarding house on K Street that was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Bill
Langford.
Classes were over for the day and the rest of the boarders and I were
just sitting down for supper, about to enjoy the meal that “Mother” [as
we called her] had prepared for us. Suddenly there was a tremor that
lasted only a few seconds.
One of the boarders said casually, “Hmm,
earthquake.” Then it really hit with all it’s might. Everything was
rocking and rolling. The cupboards in the kitchen all emptied out all
over the place. Some of the stuff landed in a huge bowl of gravy that
mother was preparing, slashing it all over her. I yelled out, “Let’s
get out of here!” It was hard to stand but we all made it out of the
back door that was only a few feet away. I remember one guy stumbled
over to a nearby picket fence and managed to hold on to it. I grabbed
the corner of the house and was holding on to that.
Looking down I saw
the earth open and then close right between my feet. Looking up I saw
the brick chimney swaying back and forth. I figured I was about to get
it right on my head. Oddly enough it held together. Looking across the
street I saw huge trees swaying from side to side. How they didn’t snap
I will never know. The sound generated sounded to me like I was
standing next to a railroad track with a train roaring past with the
sound of continually breaking glass in the background. The air was full
of the odor of natural gas.
And then it was over.
A young girl of about 15 suddenly was running
down our driveway screaming at the top of her lungs. My landlord’s son
grabbed her as she ran by him, and just in time too for the whole
backyard and rear portion of the house dropped down about 10 ft.
From somewhere down the street I heard a man yelling, “Don’t light any
matches!” We all gathered together and found that nobody had been hurt.
I went down to the end of K St. and looked out over Cook Inlet. Where
earlier it had been frozen over solid the ice was now pulverized and
the water level had dropped dramatically. Coming back up K St. I
stopped at the intersection of 4th Ave. to gaze downtown. Just then an
Anchorage policeman pulled up and asked if I would direct traffic at
that corner. I told him I would and he left saying, “Don’t let anyone
downtown!” I stayed there for a few hours. Traffic was almost
nonexistent.
One man did pull up to me and said he had to get downtown.
I told him that the police wanted nobody to go down there. He then told
me that he was going through anyhow because his mother was down there.
I let him pass without any argument.
Later as the sun was going down I
remember looking downtown as big flakes of snow started to slowly fall.
It was very quiet. I thought to myself [being a child of the Cold War]
that this is how it would be after a nuclear attack.
We all stayed in the house that night even though part of it was gone.
My alarm clock had fallen off of the night stand beside my bed and was
broken. It was the only thing I lost to the earthquake, and I have it
to this day.
The next day we were told that we had to evacuate the
house. The Langfords were fortunate enough to find a place where all of
us tenants could stay together. I stayed there with them until my class
was completed in May. I went home to Fairbanks and never saw any of
them again. A few years later I moved to New York State. I understand
that the area where the boarding house once stood is now a parking lot.
These memories are as vivid today as they were then. I certainly will
never forget.
Clark H. Jillson |
I was 4 years old and
living in the Cherry Hill area of Elmendorf Air Force Base.
My father was away on a mission leaving my mother and their 5 children
"home alone." I was coming up the basement stairs when the
quake hit and I remember falling down the stairs.
The shaking was unbelievably violent but I also remember the sound of
the quake. The noise the earthquake made is rarely
mentioned, but I can vividly remember the loud rumble which sounded
like a freight train at high speed. In fact I thought the
cause of it all was a freight train coming out of the ground
from below the apartment.
The
kitchen was a mess with all of the jars of food and condiments
broken on the floor. All of my brothers' model airplanes had
come down from their perches as well as books, figurines, etc. My
brothers' school, Government Hill Elementary was destroyed, but as
noted was closed that day for Good Friday.
With no electricity or
heat, that night we gathered with other families on our living room
floor and slept in sleeping bags. It was a great adventure
for a 4 year old, but tremors and fires in the fuel storage area nearby
(above ground due to the permafrost - since buried) kept the adults
worried for days.
I can still remember my
friend Mary Jo and I pushing on the side of the apartment building
later that summer and trying to get the building shaking again!
David Kanzler
|
In 1964 I was
7. I lived on Ash Place in Government Hill about two blocks from the
elementary school, which I attended. I was sledding on our favorite
hill on the other side of E. Loop Rd. and was walking up the hill when
the first tremor hit.
The first thing I
remember was the water tower at the top of the hill making a lot of
noise. My worst fear during the whole thing was that the tower would
fall on me! After losing my footing and sliding to the bottom of the
hill, I tried to stand up but the earth was moving in waves. It was
like being on the surface of the ocean, with waves of earth passing
underneath me. The next thing I noticed was spruce trees hitting the
ground on either
side as these waves passed underneath them. Next were the cracks in the
earth propagating around me. I remember seeing 2-3" cracks opening up
and running for tens of feet. It is amazing how, after 40 years, the
memories of that thirty minutes are still so vivid.
My oldest brother has
even better stories. He was 17 and was moving furniture on the third
(top) floor of the JC Penney building when the outside walls fell away.
He remembers looking out of the building and seeing the destruction in
the Fourth St. area as it was happening.
Dave Rice
|
My dad was stationed at
Fort Richardson. We lived across from ball fields and boy scout and
girl scout huts. I remember the man made ice skating rinks. I also
remember every minute of the Alaska Earthquake. It was supper time. My
dad had the rank for that set of quarters. A lot of the people in that
bldg. came to our basement for shelter. Food came out of cabinet, fish
out of fish bowl. Streets with cracks. Tops of bldg's down town even
with streets. I don't know which was worse, the quake, or tremors
after, for so long.
Sandra
Mitchell, Adams
|
When the earthquake of 1964 hit,
I was 9 years old and lived on Fort Richardson Alaska. I was in my
front yard making a snow fort. All the other kids went inside to eat
dinner. When the earthquake started....I saw my snow fort crumble in
front of me. I was about 40 yards from my front door and started to run
home...I fell down at least 3 times because the ground was vibrating.
When I got to my house, my mother and two older brothers were coming
out. My mother grabbed me and lay on top of me while my brothers were
bouncing around. When the earthquake stopped, we went into our house
and saw all the furniture had shifted to one side of the house. Our
gold fish were struggling on the floor.
Forty years later....I
can clearly remember every detail of that day.
Paul Heilman
|
I was 12 years old and my sister was 7 on Good Friday in 1964. My dad
was stationed at Fort Richardson. We lived right across from the little
league fields on base. I remember that we were watching TV and all of a
sudden everything in the house started to rattle and then the whole
place started moving up and down. My mom freaked out but got us all
outside and down on the ground. I could see the telephone poles rocking
back and forth for what seemed forever then it stopped. After it was
over we got up and went back into the house. There wasn’t a picture
left on the walls nor a nik-nak left on anything, except for a lone
ornamental egg that was on top of the TV. Figure that one out. Until
that day I thought that the earth was solid ground and was unshakable.
While the quake was happening, I thought the world was coming to an
end. I hope never to have that feeling again.
Fred Price
|
I was 9 years old living on
Eielson Air Force Base, my dad was at his second job at the N.C.O.
club, My two brothers, mom & I were just sitting down to supper
when the quad plex we lived in started shaking violently. The house
tilted and the cabinet doors flew open when glasses and dishes were
crashing on the floor. I hopped on the counter and was closing the
cabinets . The ground in the front yard looked like water, waves. It
happened so instantly that we really didn't get scared, more of an
adrenaline euphoria and excitement came over us. When it was over we
went outside and every thing was OK except the yard looked as if it had
been roughed up. Then for a while the tremors would pass through. I can
remember many quakes at night in Alaska, some times the after shock was
worse than the first quake. But not on Good Friday in 1964.
Robert Williams
|
I was 4 years old living on Ft. Richardson at the time of the
earthquake. Most people don't think that a 4 year old child can
remember particular events but I remember this one. My sisters and I
along with two friends were watching Davey and Goliath on the TV when
just as Davey and Goliath were entering a spooky building the TV lifted
up off of the stand that it was on and crashed to the floor. As we just
sat there on the couches and chairs, we watched the pictures on the
walls dance back and forth. During all of this time all of the dishes
in the cupboards flew out and fell to the floor. Upstairs, the toilet
was sloshing around so much that all of the water spilled and continued
to spill as the toilet kept filling itself up. I remember going down to
the basement afterward and seeing the large crack in the concrete
flooring. My older sister said that "That was the Easter Bunny stamping
his foot telling us that he was coming."
Timothy S. Osborn
|
I was 12 years old,
living in Chugiak, at the time of the Good Friday earthquake. We lived
in a 3-room log cabin about a quarter of a mile off Birchwood Loop
North. My older brother was on his 2-week encampment with the National
Guard. My mother and father were both home, as was I at the time of the
earthquake. It was a very frightening experience and the longest 4
minutes I've ever experienced. I remember my mother grabbing me and we
stood in the doorway of the cabin. I think my dad was ready to catch
the TV. His one-ton truck bounced all over the yard, but interestingly
enough, our wood pile stayed pretty much intact. The entire pile
appeared to be rocking together, as if it were placed in a giant
rocking chair. Damage to our house wasn't great, however, we did lose
our well shortly afterwards and a support beam under the cabin cracked.
The medicine cabinet emptied itself, and furniture shifted. Mother's
plants on the window sill all fell and water sloshed out of the pan we
kept on the wood stove, so we had a lot of mud on the floor. The
earthquake was even completely over yet, when our neighbors across the
street and their children came over to our house. They, like us, were
frightened. We apparently had only electric radios which did us no good
without electricity, so my father ran his truck and wired a speaker
from the truck radio into the house. We went to bed that night with our
clothes and boots on, so we could leave quickly in case we had to
evacuate. As instructed on the radio, we also packed a bag with
groceries for evacuation, mostly canned items, and discovered to our
amusement much later, that we had not included a can opener. We
eventually heard that the National Guardsmen were okay - that was great
relief, although they were put on extended duty. My brother had to
tromp through damaged homes in Turnagain By The Sea looking for bodies.
Nearly 40 years later
(and in another state) I had an "earthquake flashback". I was in a
pharmacy which had antique pharmaceutical bottles on display. There was
a demolition and construction project underway across the street. Some
heavy equipment was rumbling and all those display bottles were
vibrating and clinking. It felt and sounded like an earthquake. I had
to leave.
Sandy Gunvalson Anderson
|
|
I was a senior at West
Anchorage high school when this happened. We were out of school due to
Good Friday and that saved a lot of lives. When it hit, we were at
Gamble and North lights having just left the downtown area. The car
felt like a rolling and rocking sensation. We watched power lines
hitting each other and also a gas station on the corner lost its large
glass window causing oil cans running all over the street. We had
problems getting home as we lived in the Sand lake area and bridges
were all damaged. What a mess inside our house. What a terrible night
it was after shocks no electricity, we rescued a lady next door with
small children, her husband out in the bush. The next day we assessed
the house and found minor damage. Our school was destroyed. We ended up
going to our rival school East Anchorage and had to go split days. We
graduated that year due to both gyms being damaged out of a Air Force
Hanger. What a terrible ordeal, and I know every once in a while I will
think about it and realize just what a piece of history that we all
lived through.
William J. Ellis
|
I was stationed at Elmendorf AFB
in 1964 when the earthquake occurred. I was in the base BX store when
the shelves and light fixtures began to shake violently. Some said it
was an earthquake and to get outside. I made it to the parking lot. I
saw the parking lot moving in waves that looked like waves on an ocean.
The walls of the base gym which was next door were moving back and
forth as if they were made of rubber. The corner of the walls stated to
come loose and some bricks fell. Someone shouted that it was an act of
God because it was Good Friday. One man in the parking lot was trying
to grab the door handle of his car but was having difficulty because it
was bouncing up and down so much. When it finally stopped I went back
to the barracks. The next day I went to work in the hanger where I
worked on aircraft. Some of the metal cross beams which supported the
roof of the hanger had come loose because the rivets had snapped.
Robert Bucari
|
I was almost 6 years
old. My Dad was in the Army, and we had just been stationed at Ft.
Richardson, Anchorage, Alaska. I had climbed a small lamp pole, and was
sitting on top of it, when a man came home from work, parked his car,
and went inside his building. I remember looking at his car jiggling,
and thinking "he must have left it running". About then the force
knocked me off the pole, and I went running home. I must have fallen
several times running home. The earth was moving so much, you just
couldn't keep your feet under you. Once home, things were falling off
the walls, and I saw my Mom crying for the first time ever. That scared
me to see her crying. That meant this was REALLY bad. I don't remember
how long it lasted. But I remember the after shocks and tremors that
for days afterward, would come unexpectedly and we would get scared
thinking "here it comes again". After the main event, I remember going
to neighbors houses and comparing damage...some peoples refrigerators
fell over. Think about the force required to do that! Our favorite
street that we would sled down, got a big crack in it, running across
the street. I think it was maybe 5-6 inches wide. I don't know how deep
it went, but to us kids, it was a bottomless pit that went all the way
to China. We just kept sledding right over top of it. The days and
months that followed found me scared to get near the water, because I
thought it was going to suck me in like all the houses and structures
that destroyed near the coastline and harbors etc..... We lived there
until 1967, when we transferred to Ft. Lewis Washington. I loved
Alaska. It was like living in the frontier wilderness, but I will
always remember that Good Friday in 1964.
Tom Burt
|
I was 13 years old on
March 27 1964 and lived in South Mountain View near the Park Place
Bowling Lanes. That was my first earthquake and as the quake began, I
expected it to last a few seconds. When the shaking reached a violent
level I ran from the house and fell between our two family cars. The
cars repeatedly crashed into each other as I lay between them. I was
able to get back into the house without injury. It seemed that the
shaking would never stop. We feared a gas leak in our home so we slept
in a car the night of the 27th. My Father who was stationed on Fort
Richardson was placed on duty in downtown Anchorage so my Mother took
charge. To this day I still become a little nervous when I feel a
structure sway or shake.
Kenny Renew
Huntsville, Alabama
|
My family lived on the
13th floor of the L Street Apt's. I was only 8 years old but I remember
that day vividly. My stepfather was talking to his brother on the phone
when the quake began. He yelled, Oh my God, we're having an earthquake!
The phone went dead. That's how Seattle found out about it. I have a
magazine with many photos of that horrible day, including the apt
building we lived in. Thank you for an informative site and the stories
are healing for me. I, like many others, am still terrified of loud
rumbling noises and I run when there's an earthquake. (I live in the
northwest). You won't find me under a table or in a doorway...... Penny
|
March 27th, 1964…, what
a day. I was 18 years old, a senior at Kenai High School. My sister
Kathy was 16. We got off the school bus and walked the mile and a half
of our homestead road to our cabin on Longmere lake. I fixed our dinner
and was doing the dishes when the quake hit. I remember the water in
the sink stood up sideways, and then fell back down. We didn't have
doors on the kitchen cupboards and things started falling out all
around me. My sister started to become hysterical so I chased her
around the cabin, held on to her, and told her we were going outside. I
opened the door. The trees were laying on the ground one minute and
upright the next, then back down again Then, the lake started to crack
open and the mud from the bottom shot many feet up into the air. It
looked like the cracks were headed straight for us, so we huddled there
in the doorway until the shaking finally quit. I didn't think it would
ever stop, it felt like forever.
The main phone lines
were out, but we were on a party line, so the neighbors were all
picking up their receivers and checking on each other. My boyfriend and
his family lived about 2 miles away, and thankfully his dad decided to
drive down and check on us. He knew our parents and other siblings were
in Anchorage for the day. I must have been in shock because I told him
we were fine. He started driving up the hill, then stopped and backed
down. He told me my face was white as a ghost, and that we were going
home with him. I was so very grateful. They had six children at the
time, and lived in a 10x55 mobile home, but made room for us. It was
cozy and comforting. We all sat around listening to the battery radio,
and waiting for news.
It was at least a day
before we heard that the rest of our family was OK, and then it took my
mom 3 days to get home since the Kenai River bridge, and most of the
Portage bridges were out. She told us that right before the earthquake
started, she and my sister were on their way to J.C.Penney's to go
shopping, but that she changed her mind and they drove by the store,
and on down to 19th Ave. where they were staying with friends. She was
sure happy she made that decision.
While we were cleaning
up all the mess in the cabin, Mom pounded a nail in one of the log
beams and hung a wrench up on it so we could watch for the aftershocks.
To this day, any earth
shake brings back all the vivid details, and the fear.
Susan (Erlwein) Davis
|
When the
Music Stopped Playing
I was 11-1/2 years old
at the time the Great Alaskan Earthquake struck. We lived in the
basement unit at 1505 Orca Street in Anchorage. When the quake struck,
Father was working, Mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen at the far
end of the house, and the baby was in his high chair close to Mother. I
was lying barefoot on Mother's bed, singing a popular song with the
radio. My brothers were outside playing. As usual, our parakeet,
"Pretty Boy," flitted about his cage chattering incessantly.
Unlike the older of my younger brothers, who never realized a quake
hit, the noise of the earth's rumbling and the crashing of dishes
alerted me instantly that something was terribly awry. Seconds after
the rumbling and violent shaking began, Mother screamed from the
kitchen at one end of our basement unit, "Get Out! Get Outside!" The
radio crashed to the floor, our dinner flew off the stove, chairs
scooted and fell, books and crafts flew into our flight path. I can
only imagine what "Pretty Boy" experienced in his cage suspended from a
spring in the kitchen.
Spurred by the tone of
Mother's voice, I instantly scrambled off the bed and instantly lost my
balance as my feet hit the wobbling tile. I tried to stand again, and
fell after one or two steps. Mother came rushing through, clutching the
baby, her face tight with tension, screaming even more hysterically,
"Get Outside! Now! Run! Run!"
I scrambled and ran,
but as the earth continued to shake violently, I once again fell,
landing directly in Mother's path. Mother hurtled over me with the baby
in her arms, screaming in a voice raw with fear and despair, "Get Out!
Get Out! Get Out!"
As I watched her
disappear through the front doorway, suddenly a fierce emotion seized
me, and I began to crawl furiously on all fours. By the time I reached
the front doorway, the earth's shaking had stopped. Mother was outside
at the top of the stairwell with my 2 younger brothers, looking towards
the dark basement, paralyzed with fear and trepidation, her eyes
searching. I'll never forget the look on her face when I finally
appeared. If she could have, she would have flown down the stairwell to
me, but since she had two other children to consider and one of them
was in arms, she stood at the top of the stairs and called to me.
Regaining my footing, I ran up the flight of stairs to her. Within an
instant, mother was once again the stern mother hen, clucking orders,
and instructing us to climb inside the Rambler and wait for her.
We obeyed. As we
huddled together, cold and scared in the back of the Rambler, mother
ran in search of my brother, Robert, screaming his name throughout the
neighborhood as she quickly scoured the streets. Within a few minutes,
Mother returned to the 3 of us, empty handed and dejected. Ordering us
to stay, she ventured into the basement alone, and returned with our
coats, the car keys, and her purse. When she noticed my bare feet, I
recall her lecturing me on never going barefooted again and then she
fell silent and put the Rambler into gear. As she drove to East
Northern Lights Boulevard to fetch our father, dodging asphalt
eruptions and asphalt cracks and valleys in the roadway, tears streamed
down her face. We remained silent.
Gratefully, our
basement unit was relatively undamaged and by nightfall, my brother
Robert was returned home, unharmed. Our home became a refuge for three
other families and a young man. From that point forward, life for the
next several days took on a surrealistic feel.
Altogether, there were 23 of us in that basement refuge. Fortunately,
one of the men, Curtis, worked at Fort Richardson, and through him, we
had access to military water in large cardboard boxes containing
flexible plastic containers with spouts. We supplemented that water
with boiled snow treated with Clorox. It was the children's job to
collect snow in pots to melt so we would have water for washing and the
toilet. I remember during the next few days that the radio ran day and
night-playing only news-there was no time for music.
Early every morning for
the next couple of weeks, my Father left together with the other men. I
remember they would return long after dark, filthy and exhausted. They
would sit down and eat voraciously while the womenfolk doted on them
and then, one by one, they would turn into bed, murmuring about the
sights they had seen that day. All I knew was that they were
volunteering along with other men from the city to help clean up the
mess, and to repair broken gas, water, and sewage lines throughout the
city.
There were five women
and it seems they never slept! If you wanted to find one, you could
always find them gathered round the wooden picnic table in the kitchen,
sleeping babies in their arms, murmuring together. When the women were
not in the kitchen, they were caring for the children and men.
I was the oldest of all
the children, so it was my responsibility to keep the younger ones out
of the way of the adults, coordinate the many snow-gathering
expeditions, and round up the kids for mealtime. By mid-week, our meals
consisted of unremarkable government rations that I believe may have
come from the military bases.
All the children (there
were nine of us not including the two babies) shared a full-sized bed
set up in the parlor area. It was comforting to sleep with company,
even though we were arranged like so many clothespins, lined up neatly,
side by side, our heads at opposite ends of the bed. Most of the
children slept well, but I could not for each time I felt a tremor, I
would sit up, ready to run again.
Eventually, life began to return to normal. We were all shepherded to
one of the undamaged schools in the area to receive our typhoid shots.
I remember watching my brother, Robert, the older of my younger
brothers, stagger over to the glass windows after receiving his typhoid
shot and then fainting to the floor. I thought it was rather comical at
the time. In fact, I'm still chuckling at this moment, as I recall how
his eyes rolled up into his head and he sank to the floor with an
unceremonious sigh.
Eventually, the schools
reopened. I attended Fairview Elementary. Twelve blocks away, the
Denali school had been rendered unusable, so we shared our school by
attending in shifts. Fairview started the day with the early morning
shift and Denali took the late shift. During those days, classes and
playground times were shortened. Long after I had gone home, Denali
students were just beginning the school day.
Permission to play on
the school grounds came only after the Denali students had gone home
late in the evening. I remember how much my brothers and I loved to ice
skate. After the Good Friday earthquake, we rarely had the opportunity
to skate at the school playground. Father's answer to our dilemma was
to help us build our own ice rink in the backyard. Although crude, and
full of bumps that could send you flying through the air, the rough
rink generated many happy memories for the entire neighborhood until
the Spring thaw.
Interestingly, after
the 9.2 earthquake, "Pretty Boy" never flew again, choosing instead to
walk about his cage walls and floor or on the floors and tables of our
home. If "Pretty Boy" wanted to get down, he jumped, or used drapes for
ladders, but he never flew again.
Of course, after school
started, everyone began trickling back to their own homes. The radio
started playing music once again. Although it was nice to have my own
bed back again, I missed having everyone nearby. During a disaster,
there is something inexplicably comforting about being able to share in
the company of another human being. There is yet an even more
inexplicable comfort to experience when the music returns.
by Georgiana (Jana)
Llaneza
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