Crescent City, CA - 1994 Tsunami

Crescent City is in the center of the redwoods forests, giving you good access to whichever redwood park or trail you want. but the town itself is also quite interesting. Firstly it has a cool lighthouse that you can visit - but only during low tide when you can reach it. It has a cheese factory. It has a very nice trail all around the harbor and the coast line. It also has a very nice museum.

However, Crescent City has been hard hit by several tsunamis. No other town in the US has suffered such damage from tsunamis. Here’s what I wrote about this 2 years ago when we were here.
Tsunamis? Tsunamis? In the US? Not that I knew about - until I got to Crescent City. I thought they only happened in the western Pacific. But - no, America gets Tsunamis also. In fact, Crescent City, where were are now staying for 4 nights has had several - in fact, this is the only town in the US which had deaths due to tsunamis. They had a devastating tsunami in 1964, one in 2005, one in 2006 and one in 2011. They take tsunamis very, very seriously here.

As we drove into town along the ocean we noticed lots of warning signs for tsunamis along the highway. Of course these are serious but we did not know exactly how serious.

Researchers at Humboldt State University say that this area has experienced tsunami conditions 31 times between 1933 - 2008. Most you can’t even notice but several have actually caused damage and one was devastating, wiping out the downtown area of the city.

On March 27, 1964, an earthquake in Alaska caused some local tsunamis but also set in motion a tsunami wave which would hit Crescent Beach, CA 4.1 hours later around midnight, while people were sleeping soundly. The first wave hit washing offshore logs and other debris into town. As the people rushed to clean this up and assess the damage, the second and third waves hit. The third wave receded pulling everything with it and draining the harbor dry. All of this debris churned and churned and finally the 4th wave hit, 20’ high and filled with debris. Meanwhile a truck had been tossed into some Texaco tanks at the side of town and they had exploded into fire. When the 4th wave hit, it claimed 11 lives, collapsed power lines, strewed buildings and cars across the landscape like pick-up sticks and left 29 city blocks in ruins. 289 buildings and businesses were destroyed, 1000 cars and 25 large fishing vessels were crushed.

The Battery lighthouse keeper at that time could only watch from her perch on the lighthouse rock. Describing the 4th wave, she wrote: ‘ The water withdrew suddenly as though someone had pulled the plug out of the basin. At Citizen’s Dock, the large lumber barge loaded with millions of board feet of lumber, was sucked down in the bay. The fishing boats still in the small craft harbor, were pulled down on the floor of the ocean. Suddenly there it was, a mammoth wall of water barreling in towards us, a terrifying mass of destruction, stretching from the floor of the ocean upwards… We heard many loud blasts of breaking glass and splintering wood. We watched buildings crumple. We saw automobiles picked up like toys and overturned.’

I’m standing in front of a depiction of how high the 4 waves of the tsunami were. The first three weren’t so big but that last one was 20’ tall.

Gary is standing on a sign marking how high the tsunami came in the Redwoods National Park Visitor’s Center, at least a football field away from the beach.

The tsunami also hit several other areas on the West Coast but no location was hit as hard. Crescent City’s beach is so shallow and you can walk out so far that any large wave with as much power as a tsunami can build up strength as it moves over this shallow beach. And, when it withdraws, it pulls everything with it only to swirl around and come back on shore with even more force. Although houses, buildings, and infrastructure were later rebuilt, years passed before the city recovered from the devastation to lives, property, and its economy.

Crescent City is now thought to be the most tsunami-prepared city in the US. It has rebuilt its harbor, reconstructed its jetty and built a small wall to further impede the movement of a tsunami. Instead of being able to roll in from the ocean, over the shallow beach and right into town, there is now a small wall between the beach and a large park between the beach and the town. The town has tsunami sirens just like we in Iowa have tornado sirens. The citizens of the city also know where to go to be safe. Generally, anything north of 9th street is deemed to be high enough. We talked with several people in town - they knew where to go.

But, we also saw a sign that told us not to wait for sirens, that you should move to high ground just after the earthquake stops rumbling. Waiting for sirens might be too late. And, yes, we know where we’re supposed to go - right up the hill from the campground - right after we feel the rumbling.

When the 2005 Eureka, CA earthquake hit, the town was evacuated in 20 minutes.