The Rise Up Ride: Day 97-99, Because Tsunamis and Fjords Don't Play Well Together
Date: July 28-30 2021
Start Location: Gulf of Alaska, Prince William Sound
End Location: Kodiak Island, Alaska
The email alert from the National Earthquake Information Center arrived as the Wireless Emergency Alerts system blast began claxoning on everyone's phone onboard the Kennicott.
Holy shit! It's a big one and nearby. We felt no shaking because we were floating in port, but the shaking of the ocean, which is denser than land, might take a while to reach us.
M8.2 Earthquake - Alaska Peninsula
Preliminary Report
Magnitude 8.2
Date-Time
29 Jul 2021 06:15:50 UTC
28 Jul 2021 22:15:50 near epicenter
Location 55.474N 157.917W
Depth 46 km
Distances
91.3 km (56.6 mi) ESE of Perryville, Alaska
792.4 km (491.3 mi) SSW of Anchorage, Alaska
Location Uncertainty Horizontal: 6.6 km; Vertical 6.8 km
We were onboard the Alaska Marine Highway ferry M/V Kennicott, tied up at the Whittier Ferry Terminal at the end of Passage Canal, a fjord with Prince William Sound at one end and the 10 km long Portage Glacier at the other. Whittier would be a cool place to hang out and learn about its history (it was founded as a secret WWII deep-water military base) but not with the possibility of a massive tsunami heading towards us, roaring up a long, narrowing body of water that ends at the foot of a massive wall of ice. The possible natural disaster movie had all the ingredients to be a blockbuster at the box-office, as massive wave energy surges up the channel, forming a mega-tsunami like the one in 1958 that exploded down Lituya Bay destroying the forest 523 meters up the walls of the fjord. In the film version of the awful IRL scenario playing out in my brain, the incoming wave obliterates us and the town, slamming into the glacier, sloshing it like an ice cube back into Gulf of Alaska, triggering a displacement of water and resulting wave that would wreak devastation around the world.
The Captain ordered preparations to set sail immediately, heading as quickly as possible to open water. Some passengers may still have been on shore since the sailing to Kodiak Island was set for midnight and everyone was asked to be back on board at 23:00. The quake hit at 22:15 and we sailed at 22:30. Oops.
Within minutes of leaving port we lost mobile data and found ourselves in an information desert en route to Kodiak Island. Just as we needed to know what damage had been wrought by the largest earthquake in decades, we had no idea what sort of disaster would be waiting for us the next morning. The town of Kodiak was heavily damaged by a tsunami generated by the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, larger in magnitude but further away. As the almost perpetual day at this latitude in summer grew brighter and we approached the island, my phone began vibrating with backlogged incoming messages of concern. With luck the quake had been deep enough and in an area without slippage or displacement, so Kodiak was shaken but not stirred.
I'm currently in town at a motel, sleeping in a bed after two nights camped on deck, catching up on news, and watching the Olympics with the luxury of a television. The M/V Tustumena, which serves Kodiak and the Aleutian Island communities, sails at 17:00 for villages on the island before heading to a dawn arrival at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula in Homer. Tomorrow, I will begin riding again.
