The Fault in the Facts: Survivors recount 1964 Seward earthquake, tsunami

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Take a moment and imagine what you would do if a magnitude 9.2 earthquake hit — generating a massive tsunami — and you were just blocks from the coastline.

This story follows two teens in Seward as they experienced the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake and its aftereffects from different parts of town.

March 27, 1964 - 5:36 p.m.

“The sound got louder, and the shaking was just violent, just violent,” Linda MacSwain (née McRae) said about her memory of the world’s second-largest earthquake on record, which hit Southcentral Alaska on Good Friday.

The 15-year-old was at home in Seward with her family when the quake hit.

Phil Richardson, also 15 years old, was just a few blocks away.

“When it hit, we just said, ‘Okay, it’s just another earthquake,’” Phil recalled.

But the violent shaking only intensified as the strong quake ripped through the region.

“You could see the undulations of the ground as the waves were going through,” Phil recounted. “You couldn’t stand up.”

He said he ran outside, trying to find a safe place.

“We were hanging on to a fence,” he said. “It was almost nauseating.”

But the quake gave no reprieve.

“We saw avalanches on Mount Marathon,” Phil said.

Down the road, Linda and seven others — including her 26-day-old nephew — raced to check on their loved ones closer to the water as soon as the earth settled.

“Families just stick together. Nobody questioned if it was the right thing to do,” Linda said.

When they got to the head of the bay, their extended family wasn’t home. Linda said that was a good thing.

Across town, Phil realized though the shaking had stopped, the impact of the quake had just begun.

“It was a fire explosion more than it was a boom,” Phil said about the tank farm about a half mile away that had burst into flames.

“It was scary because you think the whole town’s going to burn up,” he said.

He said he watched as a dark cloud of smoke billowed from the fire.

From Linda’s vantage point, she said it looked like the whole town was going to burn down.

Her dad, a firefighter, and brother went to help fight the flames.

But they stopped in their tracks, realizing the fire wasn’t their most pressing concern, and they turned back with a dire warning for their family.

“My dad was yelling like I’d never heard,” she recalled. “And he was saying there’s a tidal wave.”

Otherwise defenseless to the impending wave, their loved one’s garage roof seemed their best path to safety.

“You could hear a really loud sound, but we hadn’t seen the wave yet. We could just hear it rumbling like a big freight train,” she said.

They still weren’t far enough from the approaching water.

“We all knew that where we were standing was not going to be anything that could save our lives,” she said.

The taller house was just six feet away.

“I had the baby zipped in my jacket and jumped with him,” Linda said of her young nephew.

Her dad was the last straggler to cling to the roof, as they did everything to stay alive.

“The minute he hit the roof of that house, that wave was just right at us, barreling down,” she said.

The powerful wave leveled the subdivision.

“Everything around us was flattened, just flattened,” Linda said.

“We just popped up like a cork from ground level to the tops of the big trees in Seward, just torn off of the foundation and spinning,” Linda said. “I always think the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ just spinning out of control.”

Phil’s family was nearby, and also in trouble.

“Our car stalled, and we could not get it started,” he said.

They waited for a miracle, as the tsunami raced toward them.

“As a kid, I prayed and said, ‘God, please God start this car,’” Phil said.

Their vital wish was granted.

“The car started miraculously, and we peeled out of there,” Phil said.

Now far from where they climbed onto the house, Linda’s roof came to rest in a stand of trees.

“We didn’t know what we were floating on. We knew we were on a roof, but we didn’t know if we had walls,” she said. “But we were alive.”

They stayed on their perch as tsunami waves continued overnight.

“There are lots of prayers,” she said. “Seward was burning, and nobody knew where we were.”

Once the roof settled into the muck and debris that had washed ashore, Linda’s brother left his family to look for help.

“None of us wanted him to go, but we knew it was the only chance that we would have,” she said.

Phil said that people were surprised to see him when he made it to Bayview School where Phil’s family was taking refuge.

“People had seen us take that turn onto Airport Road,” Linda said. “So the family of Scottie McRae was listed as dead.”

But as it turns out, Linda said her life may not have been in danger if she had stayed put after the quake.

She said the tsunami did not reach her home, and the shaking did minimal damage.

“Would anybody of my family change what we did? No,” Linda said.

All of Linda’s loved ones who were stuck on the roof eventually made it to Bayview School. The 26-day-old baby was taken to the hospital for one night.

Phil’s made the trek home from Bayview School in the morning.

“For the next several days ... we weren’t destitute, and we had food and everything else there,” Phil said. “We just couldn’t heat anything.”

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