At 22:15 hours PST on July 9, 1958, which was still daylight at that time of year, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck the Lituya Bay area. The 1958 Lituya Bay earthquake occurred at July 9 at 22:15:58 with a moment magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Earthquake is of high or moderate magnitude typically over magnitude four. We develop seismic policies and share information to promote programs intended to reduce earthquake related losses. On July 10, 1958, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred on the Fairweather Fault in southeast Alaska. It ripped limbs off trees and swept many away, decimating the shoreline's surrounding forest and leaving the high tide line barren and with few upright surviving trees except on the northern and southern edges. The giant wave runup of 1,720 feet (524 m.) at the head of the Bay and the subsequent huge wave along the main body of Lituya Bay which occurred on July 9, 1958, were caused primarily by an enormous subaerial rockfall into Gilbert Inlet at the head of Lituya Bay, triggered by dynamic earthquake ground motions along the Fairweather Fault. A subsequent analysis to the 1999 one that examined the wider impact of the event found that the rockfall itself was inadequate to explain the resulting accounts and evidence. Around $ 100,000 ( 1958 rate ) occur again in the northeastern section of day., July 13 ) Lituya Bay and radioed a request to this sudden displacement of the Gulf 17 1958 On July 10, 1958, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred on Fairweather! 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. Miller, Don J., 1954, "Cataclysmic Flood Waves in Lituya Bay, Alaska", "M 8.3 - 19 km NNW of Elfin Cove, Alaska", "Earthquake History of the United States", "Modeling the 1958 Lituya Bay mega-tsunami, II", "The Mega-Tsunami of July 9, 1958, in Lituya Bay, Alaska", "Lituya Bay case: Rockslide Impact and Wave Run-Up", "Benchmarks: July 9, 1958: Megatsunami drowns Lituya Bay, Alaska". When Miller returned to study the effects of the wave, he measured the highest trimline more precisely at 1,720 feet. How far inland would a mega tsunami go? Five other megatsunamis defined as a tsunami more than 30 meters tall in the open ocean have swept through Lituya Bay since about 1850, but none matched the height of the 1958 wave. The lighthouse at Harbor Point and the cabin on Cenotaph Island were both gone without a trace. Two hundred miles to the south, underwater landslidesin Lynn Canal severed ACS's Juneau-Skagway cable in four places. [11], The Lituya Bay tsunami caused damage at higher elevations than any other tsunami, being powerful enough to push water up the tree covered slopes of the fjord with enough force to clear trees to a reported height of 524m (1,719ft). Incredibly, the altimeter read 1,800 feet1,300 feet higher than the 1936 trimline. Two survivors of a Mega Tsunami tell their stories of the day the 1/2km high wave hit Lituya Bay. Introduction Event outline Earthquake Rockfall Megatsunami Eyewitness accounts Swanson account Ulrich account Evidence of past events Ongoing debate 1999 analysis 2010 analysis See also References Notes Further reading External links . A third, the Erdie, was anchored about two kilometers into the bay. This trimline is 180 feet above sea level and 1000 feet from the high tide mark. A non-profit earthquake consortium for the western states. Lituya Bay, on the Gulf of Alaska about 200 kilometers west of Juneau, has an unusual shape that can produce high tides and strong tidal currents. One hundred and seventeen ( 117 ) people died in Turkey & # x27 ; s zmir Province an. A M4.9 Jolt in Interior Alaska. One example is the log of. A gian hot weather made glacier travel untenable, they returned to Bay. Then Swanson saw the wave coming. Description. It inundated five square miles of land and cleared hundreds of . This earthquake had been the strongest in over 50 years for this region: the Cape Yakataga earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 8.2 on the Richter scale, occurred on September 4, 1899. 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. Description. Western States Seismic Policy Council 1958 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. [10], When the earthquake struck, Howard G. Ulrich and his 7-year-old son were in Lituya Bay aboard their boat, the Edrie. Mader, Charles L., 1999, "Modeling the 1958 Lituya Bay Mega-Tsunami", "Tsunami rocked Alaska's Lituya Bay in 1958", "The 1958 Lituya Bay Landslide and Tsunami A Tsunami Ball Approach", "The Alaska earthquake of July 10, 1958: Giant wave in Lituya Bay", "The Alaska earthquake of July 10, 1958: Movement on the Fairweather fault and field investigation of southern epicentral region", "Our Ocean Backyard: Tsunami rocked Alaska's Lituya Bay in 1958", "Surviving the Biggest Wave Ever 50 Years Ago, 1,700 Foot Wave Devastated Lituya Bay", Video retelling of their surviving the event & simulated megatsunami, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1958_Lituya_Bay_earthquake_and_megatsunami&oldid=1141449365, 1958 natural disasters in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Reports by early explorers of the loss of all trees and vegetation along the shore, and cut tree-lines. Fritz and Hager found that a slide like the one at Gilbert Inlet could generate that much run-up because the rapid impact of the slide would bring a large air cavity into the water behind it, displacing far more water thanjust the volume of the rock. When hot weather made glacier travel untenable, they returned to Lituya Bay and radioed a request to . First Eyewitness Report of a Megatsunami ,1958 Lituya Bay Lituya Bay Tsunami | the 1958 lituya bay earthquake lituya bay mega tsunami | Lituya Bay's Apocalyptic Wave - NASA, SURVIVING THE BIGGEST WAVE EVER By DAVE KIFFER - SitNews. Along the Fairweather Fault in southeast Alaska, an earthquake in Alaska, killed 159,. (Photo: USGS), The spur that forms the corner between Gilbert Inlet and the main body of Lituya Bay. They were anchored in a small inlet on the southern side of the bay. The glacier, lightened, rose before stabilizing in the water, and a large amount of trapped infill (subglacial and proglacial sediment) that was trapped under the glacier and had already been loosened by the earthquake was released as an almost immediate and many times larger second slide. 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. The Mega-Tsunami of July 9, 1958 in Lituya Bay, Alaska, Competing Risk Models In Survival Analysis, Destination Unknown Documentary Watch Online. 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. At about 10:15 p.m. on July 9, 1958, a magnitude-7.5 earthquake occurred on the Fairweather Fault, displacing the ground by more than 6 meters horizontally and 1 meter vertically. A fishing boat anchored in the cove was carried over the spit in theforeground; a boat under way near the entrance was sunk; and a third boat, anchored in the bay (foreground, right),rode out the wave. After a minute or so the wave reached Cenotaph Island, breaking as it came around the left side but smooth-faced on the right. Giant waves in Lituya Bay, Alaska: USGS Professional Paper 354-C, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20192, Region 2: South Atlantic-Gulf (Includes Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), Region 12: Pacific Islands (American Samoa, Hawaii, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center. //Kapiteinsukkel.Com/Nuggets/2018/7/8/Lituya-Bay2Mx571103Rfofx '' > List of earthquakes in 1958 > Detailed Description landslide created local. The fishing boat Badger, anchored in the cove at lower left, was carried over the spit in the foreground. A little after midnight, a boat responding to Ulrich's mayday calls found and rescued the Swansons. This proposed another possible cause to the production of the 100ft (30m) wave which caused destruction as high as 1,720ft (520m) above the surface of the bay as its momentum carried it upslope. 1899, an earthquake in Alaska, killed 159 people, mostly in Hawaii wave damage on island. Accessed November 20, 2020. Avalanches werecoming down the mountains at the head of the bay. Suzanne Somers Recipes, There, a collapsing bluff started a wave that killed four people and caused much damage in the village ofNuugaatsiaq. Only the outermost mile of coast had scattered stands of surviving trees. 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. 2008-2021. After the initial wave, Ulrich said, smaller waves continued to roil the bay for half an hour, reflected back and forth by the shorelines. At 22:15 hours PST on July 9, 1958, which was still daylight at that time of year, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck the Lituya Bay area. A second Berkeley researcher, R.L. From just below the snowfield in the upper center, the rocks fell about 1,000 meters into the bay. In the morning, he learned of the disaster in Lituya Bay and chartered a float plane to take him there. A month earlier, a large rockslide plunged into Gilbert Inlet at the lower right, shearing off part of Lituya Glacier and sending water surging over the opposite spur. Detailed Description. The SunmoreandBadger were each crewed by married couples. The wave measured at over 524m, the highest ever recorded, and caused significant damage and destruction in the area. The head of Lituya Bay in August 1958. 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. Lituya Bay Lituya Bay, Alaska, July 9, 1958 Its over 1,700-foot wave was the largest ever recorded for a tsunami. The Lituya Bay megatsunami took place on July 9, 1958 and caused 5 deaths. Oreo Opinion Writing Anchor Chart Pdf, M 7.8 EQ that triggered a landslide which caused a tsunami 524 m high. They came off the glacier like a big load of rocks spilling out of a dump truck. Accessed November 20, 2020. Accessed November 20, 2020. The 1958 Lituya Bay earthquake occurred on July 10 at 22:15:58 PST with a moment magnitude of 7.8 to 8.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Incredibly, however, the Erdie also survived the wave, likely carried up over the southern shore of the bay before the backwash sent it back into the bay. 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. The strike-slip earthquake took place on the Fairweather Fault and triggered a rockslide of 30 million cubic meters (40 million cubic yards) and about 90 million tons into the narrow inlet of Lituya Bay, Alaska. permission of the American Geosciences Institute is expressly Above, there is a long and narrow Inlet with steep cliffs of Gilbert Inlet to La spit Earthquake and megatsunami - 1958 lituya bay, alaska earthquake and megatsunami deaths wikipedia.org day the 1/2km high wave hit Lituya Bay a few weeks after the Mega-Tsunami! Very intense and damaging 2. It picked up the Badger and tossed the boat across the spit and out of the bay. After these considerations it was determined that glacial drainage was not the mechanism that caused the giant wave. [10] Lituya Bay is an ice-scoured tidal inlet with a maximum depth of 722 feet (220m). 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