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CRESCENT
CITY
No such thing as tsunami false alarm
In Crescent City, residents forced to re-live 1964 tragedy
- Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
On Wednesday, a day after a 7.2 offshore earthquake produced a tsunami
warning but no tsunami -- and failed to even knock down any pins at the alley
-- residents said they were glad they hadn't been forced to build on the
nickname "
"I still get a little too excited -- I could see this place gone,"
said Debbie Stover, the owner of Del Norte Office Supply in
Stover was 6 years old in 1964, but she said her memories of the devastation are vivid. She pointed across the street, at a plaza now called Tsunami Landing. "There was a car thrown through that building over there," she said.
All over
They were talking about the only tsunami ever to kill in the continental
Authorities were standing by their better-safe-than-sorry response. After
1964 -- and especially after the December tsunami in southern
It all started Tuesday at 7:50 p.m., when an earthquake more than 90 miles off the coast shook the town's 7,452 residents but failed to stir them.
Julie Duhaime, a 49-year-old waitress at Glen's cafe -- which is decorated with pictures of the wreckage in 1964 -- didn't even feel the temblor while working on her truck in her garage. "All I know," she said, "is my peacocks were upset like there was a raccoon in the cage."
"What was scary," said John Sousa, 48, the general manager at Tsunami Lanes, "was the warning that came after that."
Del Norte County officials, alerted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration soon after the quake that a tsunami would hit
"We're on the coast, so guess what, we were the first one (that would be hit)," Luis said. "We had to react very quickly."
Mayor Dennis Burns said, "I think it was a good call. When it's that close to shore, it's better safe than sorry. We'd do the same thing tomorrow."
Burns is a charter school principal whose students have recently been crafting tsunami survival kits.
Some residents were calm Tuesday night and some were panicked. There were at least three fender-benders but no injuries, Luis said. Most residents and tourists headed to the foothills to the northeast or to Highway 101 vista points to the south.
Some tidal gawkers headed the other direction. Sam Cochran, a 25-year-old student at nearby College of the Redwoods who just completed a research paper on tsunamis, called his mom after hearing about the warning and was told, "Don't go, don't go to the water!"
"So when I got off the phone, I went straight down there," Cochran said.
The only real problem during the emergency, Luis said, was disabled phone lines. A spokesman for Verizon, which has 15,000 customers in the county, said Wednesday that service was spotty for 90 minutes because of callers flooding the system.
While
Over coffee at Glen's, Bill Parker, Del Norte County's former volunteer
director of civil defense, recalled what he was doing the night of
A mortician, Parker had been doing business in
About 150 buildings were destroyed or damaged. Boats were beached, and trailers were pulled into the sea.
"Cars were strewn everywhere," recalled Sandy Nuss. "There were motels and houses in the middle of the street. The water rushed through the appliance store, and when it receded there were washers and dryers and refrigerators all over the place. It was a real mess."
Nuss, a 67-year-old researcher at the Del Norte County Historical Society, said she had watched the tsunami from her home, inland and uphill from the coast.
"People saw the harbor go dry, and no one knew what it meant then," she said. "Everyone knows what it means now."
M.D. McGuire, 81, said he had responded to the first wave by driving to the harbor to see if his fishing boat was still there. He stopped by the Long Branch Tavern to buy cigarettes. Soon, the second wave came and his pickup was carried off by the flow.
When the water crashed through the tavern, McGuire and the bar owner's son, Gary Clawson, moved several people to the roof. Then the two men swam to high ground, got McGuire's rowboat and had a friend tow it back to town.
When McGuire showed a reporter the culvert Wednesday, he had to pause to collect himself.
Asked if he is worried about the prospect of another tsunami slamming
Chronicle staff writer Steve Rubenstein contributed to this report.E-mail Demian Bulwa at [email protected].
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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/16/BAGIUD9G061.DTL