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Tsunami slams B.C. coast

Broadcast Date: March 31, 1964

Just before midnight on March 27, 1964, the first of six massive waves strikes Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. Sparked by the deadly Good Friday earthquake in Alaska a few hours earlier, a two-storey "wall of water" topples trees, flings cars into buildings and rips houses from their foundations. CBC Television talks to residents as they struggle to recover.

Tsunami slams B.C. coast

• Tsunami is a Japanese word meaning "harbour wave." A tsunami, often mistakenly called tidal waves, is a series of long waves on the surface of the sea. Earthquakes beneath the ocean, volcanic eruptions, or landslides often trigger tsunamis.
• On Good Friday, March 27, 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake hit more than 20 kilometres below Alaska's Prince William Sound. The resulting tremors and tsunami killed 122 people and caused in excess of $106 million US in damage along the Pacific coast. It is the largest earthquake ever recorded in the U.S.

• The quake hit the Alaskan coast at 5:27 p.m. PST, virtually wiping out several communities including Valdez, Seward, Whittier and the capital, Anchorage. The waves hit the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands around 9:30 p.m., Prince Rupert and Tofino around 11 p.m.
• While Alaska was hardest hit by the disaster, the resulting tsunami spread destruction as far south as California over the space of 24 hours. The B.C. mainland didn't get any significant damage.

• The first wave struck the largely unsuspecting city of Port Alberni just before midnight.
• That 2½ metre wave was followed 90 minutes later by what reporter CBC Peter Riley called "a 14-foot wall of water" which picked up cars, uprooted trees and washed away entire homes.
• That two-storey wave was the biggest of six to hit the region over the space of seven hours, according to a report on the disaster prepared by B.C. Civil Defence.

• The report estimated the wave was travelling at nearly 400 km/h and "smashed everything in its path and tossed enormous logs and other debris, including buildings, boats and automobiles up to 1,000 feet [or 305 metres]."
• In the end, about 350 homes were damaged and 58 destroyed. Total damage to Port Alberni, a mill community on the west coast of Vancouver Island, was estimated at $5 million. Miraculously, no one there was killed by the tsunami.

• Like the woman in this television clip who talks about watching her neighbours' homes float away around her, tales of survival abounded in the days following the waves.
• The B.C. report singled out a few tales including: "One man [who] dashed out to save his brand-new convertible only to find a pair of youngsters floating by on a log; he too was chest deep before the trio made it to dry ground. A civil defence worker rowing around in the dark checking houses flashed his light into one and rescued a baby floating on a mattress."

• As the seismologist in this clip points out, the tsunami got stronger as it funnelled through the Alberni Inlet. By the time it passed through the narrow inlet the waves reached a peak of three metres and extended some 30 kilometres inland.
• The word tsunami hadn't yet come into usage in the 1960s. In this clip, both CBC reporters refer to it as either a "tidal wave" or "tidal disturbance." Only the seismologist calls it by its proper name.

• In his report, W.W. Mathers, the Civil Defence director of operations and planning, concluded that with $5 million damage and no deaths, Vancouver Island residents were fortunate.
• At the time of the 1964 tsunami, it had been 35 years since a tsunami had struck Canada.
• On November 18, 1929, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake rumbled through the Grand Banks off the coast of southern Newfoundland.

• At first, the damage of the Grand Banks quake seemed relatively insignificant — small landslides flooded a few highways and houses sustained small structural fractures.
• But 2½ hours later, a 27-metre high tsunami, triggered by the earthquake, struck the Burin Peninsula. Twenty-nine people died, houses and fishing boats were swept out to sea and 48 kilometres of coastline sat in ruins.

Tsunami slams B.C. coast

Medium: Television

Program: Newsmagazine

Broadcast Date: March 31, 1964

Host: Peter Riley

Duration: 4:11

Last updated:
Feb. 13, 2009