| About Beverly J Raffaele |
About Beverly J. Raffaele I am proud to say that I share my life with Stephen. He is My husband and my best friend. We have six grown children who have blessed us greatly with sixteen grandchildren. My passion is writing, art, and flower gardening. I have published six books as of this date and I have three more on the horizon. They are available at Barnes&Nobel and Amazon.com as well as many other online bookstores... I love to paint, create, dance, sing, and spoil our grandchildren. There is nothing more precious than a child. Educate them, train them, hug and play with them, worry about them and nose into their life. Parenthood is not for cowards. My favorite written prayer outside of the Lord's Prayer is that of Saint Francis of Asisi "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace, Where there is hatred, let me so love, Where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith, Where there is despair, hope, Where there is darkness, light, where there is sadness, joy, Oh Divine Master, grant, that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love, for it is in giving that we receive, But it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." |
Scroll to the bottom and read the miraculous true story of how back in 1964,Beverly's family survived a tsunami, on a clear night with a bright full moon. View the photos of the destruction and read about others who also survived. The most compelling is the story of Peggy Coon and her husband as they were the lighthouse keepers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dreaming of 1958 I want to walk down a hot country road Where I can feel the heat on my soles. I’ll sing, “never knew what I missed, til I kissed ya, how did I exist before I kissed ya, uh huh…” I was madly in love with Don Everly back in 1958. Take me to the river, so crystal clear that if I lay on my belly to watch rainbow trout flashing blue, green and pink. In my special spot, a shaft of sunlight shows on the river between tall pungent trees. My little brothers are pushing each other in and are telling me that I have skinny legs. Sand, burn my feet, windy river, cool them Sun, shine on my bony little back. Let me hear the fish splash heavy redwood boughs, wave hello. Take me back, oh dream and leave me there. Beverly Jeanne Raffaele copyright 2007 |
| The House we lived in |
| Our Block |
Front Street
| The gray area on the map is the flood zone from the tidal wave. We took a direct hit. The arrow is pointing to our block Front Street bordered the shore line on north beach. |
| Tommy at Battery Point Lighthouse 2005 |
By Beverly J Raffaele A Personal Account of the Good Friday Tidal Wave March 27, 1964 Photo: Thomas Gee, 1966 Author Beverly J Raffaele Copyright © 2007 All rights reserved LULU Press www.LULU.com www.Artspoetry.com This story is dedicated to my dad Thomas C Gee and my brothers Thomas E Gee, Donald Chris Gee, Robert N Gee With Love This is a true story and every effort has been made to make it as accurate as possible. The story is told in my own words and then there are excerpts of the personal accounts of others that survived the tsunami and had to begin to rebuild their lives. Beverly J Raffaele The nearest town to Crescent City is Brookings Oregon, which is located twenty miles to the north. There are some bergs in between, Fort Dick, Smith River, and to the northeast Hiouchi and Gasquet. if you drive south on highway 101 to the nearest over-look, you will see the city wrapped around a perfect crescent shaped peninsula. Our Story It was in the fall of 1960. Daddy was thirty years old when my mother left us and that left him to raise four children alone. Me, I was a ten year old, skinny little girl, with round brown eyes and baby fine brown hair. I had three little blue eyed blonde brothers ages eight, six and five. It was a worrisome time for Daddy. He was strong enough and loved his children enough to take the responsibility on. I have great love and respect for my Dad. Three and a half years later, his strength was tested again. March 27, 1964 dawned a crisp sunny day in Crescent City. Daddy had bought us new Easter clothes and he had the boy’s outfits laid out on the couch. He had bought them new dress pants, shirts, shoes and socks. I picked out a pretty skirt and blouse outfit and I took them upstairs to my room. My Aunt Barbara had arrived on Friday evening by Greyhound bus from San Francisco to spend Easter with us. She had to go back on Sunday because she had to be back at work Monday morning. That evening, when it was time for bed, she told Daddy that she would sleep downstairs on the couch. He insisted that she go upstairs and take my brother Tommy’s bed. Daddy told her that Tommy could sleep with him. It was a beautiful moonlit night and the ocean glistened with the light of the moon. I was sleeping soundly when suddenly there was a large blast, so powerful that it threw me out of bed and onto the cold linoleum floor. I got up and ran to my bedroom window to see that the sky was on fire and water was slapping against the house just inches beneath my windowsill! I ran in a panic into the boy’s room where my Aunt Barbara was and she had also been awakened and shaken from the blast. Running back into my bedroom, I once again looked out my window. I wasn’t sure if I was in a realistic nightmare or truly awake. What I saw made me think that I was sick and delirious, my Dad’s 1955 cream-colored Chevrolet floated by. Aunt Barbara came to my side. I could hear my little brothers yelling something through my haze and then the next thing that floated by was our landlord’s Jeep; then I felt them and other things bump against the house. Aunt Barbara was very calm and with that soft southern accent of hers, she simply said, “Beverly, it’s a tidal wave.” She was former Marine who had been stationed in Hawaii. She knew all about these things. With those words, I suddenly realized that this was no dream and as I stared out the window in shock, I realized too that my Dad’s bedroom was just beneath mine and the water was above the top of his window! “Daddy!” I screamed in sheer terror. I ran from my room, through my brother’s room and then I bolted for the stairs. Aunt Barbara grabbed me around the waist, but I broke free of her. Still screaming for Daddy and in a panic to get to him, I started to run down the stairwell. I was halfway down when I heard a horrible excruciatingly loud creak and then I felt the old house start to lean. At that moment I thought that it was going to break away from the old Darby Building that the house was partially connected to, and then collapse over; but it was the main staircase breaking away from the wall. I ran back to the top of the stairs, but then I remembered that my little brother Tommy had slept with Daddy to make room for Aunt Barbara. He was downstairs too! “Daddy, Tommy!” I shrieked. The sounds and the smells were as if I was standing at the shore during a pounding squall but there was something else, I could smell propane gas! The ocean roared, the big three story house groaned against its power, I could hear wood splintering and large bangs as logs and debris came right through the front of our house. My Aunt kept an eye on me continuously; telling me to stay put while she was trying to keep my middle brother Donny from running down the stairs after me. He was running around like a wild little squirrel. I stayed glued to the top of that dark stairwell screaming “ Daddy!” “Tommy!” over and over. As the power of the wave receded, The tall old house leaned making a horrible creaking sound and then after what seemed like an eternity, I heard a voice, say, “stay upstairs!” It was Daddy. “Where’s Tommy!” I yelled, trying to swallow the lump that was rapidly growing in my throat; then to my great relief, I could hear him crying and saying, “Daddy don’t leave me, don’t leave me. Then I heard Daddy say, “I won’t son, hang on.” I stood at the top of the stairs as Daddy and Tommy climbed toward me. I could barely see their forms in the damp darkness of the stairwell. I learned later, that the wave hit around two o’clock in the morning. They reached me shivering, with their teeth chattering. Daddy and Tommy’s experience battling the wave: I sat down with my dad at his kitchen table in October of 2005. I set down the tape recorder and then I asked Daddy to tell me what happened. He started slow at first but then as he talked he started remembering names and details. This is what he told me. “I had been awakened by the blast. I rose up to look out the bedroom window and saw water above my bed. The water rose to above the window and then I heard a roar. I jumped and stood up on the bed and then the water crashed through the front of the house and rushed into my room.” “The mattress began to fill up with water and then it began to fold up all around me and Tommy. The water started rising rapidly. I thought if the house was going to go, then I could try to get out through the window. I held Tommy up with one hand while I tried to pound the window with a piece of mushy driftwood. It wouldn’t do anything so I started to frantically pound with my fist. I couldn’t get anywhere with those small window panes and I ended up cutting a deep gash in my hand. I knew it was futile so now I had to find a way to keep me and Tommy from drowning. My hand was bleeding badly. "Tommy started clinging to me as the water continued to rise. The mattress, being sponge rubber, began to float. Tommy was dragging me down so I shoved him up on the mattress. Now I was being swirled around and I was trying hard to tread water while fighting the debris that swirled around my legs. The water felt like ice! It was still rising and I kicked upward and then Tommy grabbed me around the neck and clung on like a monkey. He was pulling me down again so I told him, ‘turn loose, you are going to drown us,’ then I pushed him toward the ceiling for air. I had just under a foot of air left when we were suddenly drawn back and slammed against the bedroom wall. The outer wall of the room buckled in but my heavy iron bed held it.” The wave was receding and the old house groaned in its wake. “We had survived and we hadn’t swallowed any ocean water which would have made us really sick.” “It was dark, all the lights were out, I could hear the Texaco gas tanks as they exploded and there was a strong smell of propane. I felt that it was time to try and get out of there and try to get upstairs. I knew it was a tidal wave and I didn’t know what else was coming." "Tommy held me tightly around the neck. I made him get down and he held tight onto my hand. I had to climb over something that was jammed in the doorway from the hall to the living room. I wanted to leave Tommy where he was for a minute because I didn’t know if the stairs were there or not and I couldn’t see well enough to know how dangerous it was. Tommy would not stay; he clung to me; so we felt our way through, climbing over piles of debris. I was cold, terribly cold.” My Experience Daddy’s voice was shaking and he kept saying, “stay up there, stay put.” “This way Daddy, this way,” I said, as they made their way up the pitch-black stairwell. When they reached the top of the stairs, I ran and got a blanket and wrapped it around Tommy’s trembling body. They were so cold! Daddy wrapped himself up in a blanket too. He didn’t know what was going to meet us if we tried to get out of the house. The smell of propane was in the air and the flames from the fuel tanks that had exploded were flickering through the upstairs windows. So, we huddled on the beds, filled with fear and shock until daylight. When daylight came, Daddy was able to find some old clothes that were in some wooden bins, built into the walk through closet between the boy’s big bedroom and my little one. He found two pairs of jeans with holes in the behind. One pair had a hole on one side and one had a hole on the other, so he put both of them on. He found an old blue sequined shirt, an old pair of shoes, and a coat. From the living room of the house there were six steps and then a landing; it turned and then there was the stairwell that led to the second floor. The landing had given way and we made our way out by climbing down the stairs and over debris that was piled up against it. The front door had been busted open and the living room windows were busted out. In the living room were logs, deep sand and junk. There was junk everywhere and amongst that junk was our living room furniture. The big wood-heater, that normally sat away from the back wall of the living room; was jammed in the doorway that went into the hall beneath the stairwell. The bathroom was to the right of the hall and Dad’s bedroom was straight back. It was jammed solid and that was what Daddy and Tommy had to climb over to get out. We heard voices and our landlord, Richard Childs, and another man were walking toward the front of our house where we were making our way out. Richard looked at Daddy with great relief and said, “I thought you had drowned.” By ten o’clock that night, Richard had been radioed that there was a tidal wave coming. If he would have warned us, we would have went to higher ground or we would have gone into the Darby building that our house was connected to. There was a door in our house leading into it at the top of the first flight of stairs. The Darby building had two-foot thick brick walls. You couldn’t hear it storm in there. It was a hundred years old and had withstood tidal waves, cyclones, and earthquakes. Instead of warning us, in all fairness, I am just guessing this, Richard Childs, being raised on that block, had seen many tsunamis over the years but none that had devastated all of Front Street. Anyway, he was standing out on the sidewalk when one wave crossed Front Street, came up to the curb and then receded. What he didn’t know was, as that wave receded, it nearly emptied out the harbor and a twenty-one foot wave was right behind it. He said that when he was radioed that the big one was just offshore, he barely had time to run in the house to get his wife and dog and escape up the alley between our houses, to Second Street, then to Third Street and so on. He said all the while the water was nearly on his bumper. The next morning when he returned, the house that he and his wife lived in just across the alley from ours, was split in two and one end had floated around and met the other. When we made it outside and saw their little ranch style house destroyed, we thought they had been killed. When Daddy saw him coming up the alley, he was as relieved to see Richard, as Richard was to see us. Richard offered us rooms in the Dodge Inn. It faced Second Street and had sustained little damage. “Take as many rooms as you need and stay as long as you like Tom,” he told my dad. Jacquie Childs fed us all breakfast and then Daddy told us to go to bed and get some rest. I didn’t want to go to bed, I was curious and I wanted to hear everything and see everything. I obeyed Daddy but for just a little while. We went up a wide stairway carpeted in thick floral carpeting. The banisters were heavy dark wood and the hotel was furnished with antiques. Once in the room, with it’s old hand carved dresser and beveled mirror, I headed for the steel framed double bed. The sheets were cold, white and starchy. They felt horrible on my legs so I crawled between the blanket and the bedspread and curled up to try and rest, but my eyes were wide open. Daddy, in the mean time, was taking inventory. He didn’t have a car; our 1955 Chevy was across the street perched up on a city sand pile. The 1956 Chevy Wagon that he had overhauled was still in the garage, but it was filled with what ever the ocean brings in and the water had naturally got up into the wiring, so it was no good. In the meantime, I got up and went back to the house with Daddy and we left the boys at the Dodge Inn with Aunt Barbara. Daddy and I climbed around in the house to see what all was lost. In the kitchen, there was a tire up on our kitchen counter along with a lot of other foreign objects that included oilcans and other debris. Much to Daddy’s relief, our old white china cupboard and sideboard had floated on its back like a boat. On the top shelf of that old cupboard, he kept our family photos in a little red overnight case that Daddy has to this day. He also had our birth certificates, titles to the cars and other important papers on that shelf. They were all dry. The most important thing to him though, was finding his wallet. There was six hundred dollars cash in it. He muscled away the jammed wood heater from the doorway that led back to his room and we went in to search for it. The room didn’t have a closet, but it had a big antique armoire in it. It had been toppled over by the wave and it was laying on its front. When Daddy had gone to bed the night before, he had pulled off his slacks and laid them in the floor beside the armoire. We lifted and pushed to move the armoire over and there laid Daddy’s slacks with his wallet still in the back pocket. We had our lives, our upstairs bedroom furniture, six-hundred dollars in the bank and the six-hundred dollars in Daddy’s wet wallet. He had a month’s wages coming from Peterson Brothers lumber mill where he worked. Even though that was all we had to our name, we felt blessed just to be alive. Later that day, Daddy had a friend of his, take him to look for a car. He paid one hundred dollars for an old 1956 Plymouth to use for work. Then he went back in to find all the clothes that he could salvage. He pulled them out of the old armoire and he pulled more out of the debris and sand. Then he went uptown to the Laundromat to wash them. The man that owned the Laundromat didn’t like it because he didn’t want the sand getting in the motors of his washing machines. But he allowed Daddy to use them. He had to wash everything twice. He cleaned the washing machines out and then ran them through again. The Red Cross set up a station in the community center up town. It was the perfect place for an intake station because it was so large and it had not been reached by the wave. Daddy wanted to talk to them about housing. I was in an office filling out papers for us and Daddy was out in the foyer talking to folks, including someone from the local radio station. The list of the dead was going to be broadcast. I don’t know if he said, “my daughter isn’t with me and her name is Beverly” or what, but the broadcast said, “Thomas Gee, and sons, Thomas, Donald and Robert are accounted for, but daughter Beverly is missing.” I still don’t know how it happened, but my mother who was living in San Francisco at the time, heard the broadcast and became hysterical. As soon as highway 101 was cleared, Aunt Barbara left by Greyhound bus to go back to San Francisco because she had to work and Mom came in. She went directly to our house on Front Street and when she saw the devastation, she became physically ill. Back at the community center, a man by the name of Bud Hendricks said that he had a house for rent and he told a worker at the Red Cross that he would let us have it for the first month free. After the paper work was filled out, a man from the Red Cross went with Daddy to look at our house. He was shocked at the destruction of the down stairs. He carefully climbed upstairs with Daddy and saw that we had our twin beds, our clothes and dressers. The Red Cross, “God bless them,” gave us vouchers to buy furniture for the living room, kitchen and one bedroom. We needed household goods, groceries, and the things it takes to supply a home, dishes, pots and pans, towels and more. They gave us one hundred thirty five dollars for small essentials. That amount of money went a long way in 1964. Bless his heart, was Bud Hendricks ever glad to see Daddy. When he approached him, they shook hands and he said, “Tom, I thought you had drowned.” We had the vouchers, but there wasn’t any new furniture in town. The furniture store had been flooded out and we couldn’t go to Eureka, Grants Pass, or even to Brookings to buy anything because we had no way to haul it. Crescent City had a second hand store and auction house. We got the best second hand furniture they had. It wasn’t great but it was clean and usable. We also needed a washer and dryer. Our old dryer was sitting up on the attic stairs of the woodshed and our washing machine had salt water in the motor and debris inside the tub. We used the Laundromat until those could be replaced. The police department gave those that lived in the tidal wave zone tags to wear so that they could come and go without being stopped because there was looting going on. The jewelry store, two banks, oil from the Shell and Texaco stations, liquor bottles from the liquor store, clothes from the clothing store, merchandise from Safeway and so much more, was scattered everywhere and the looters swarmed on it. The National Guard came in and they sealed the area off. Daddy couldn’t get down town to get his money out of the bank and although the bank was flooded, the money was secure so it wasn’t a loss. Now, after losing everything, it was time for him to set up housekeeping again. He did just that too and I am so very thankful that my father is a man of strength and character. I love and respect him very much. He had his job as a lumber grader for “Peterson Brothers” and although he had to take time off for us to recover, they didn’t dock him one penny. It was as if he hadn’t missed the days that it took for him to get settled again. The list of blessings are long and so are the lists of tragedy. We knew nearly everyone that had perished. Where is my Father now? He is a healthy seventy-seven years old. He and his wife Bea, walk two miles everyday that the weather permits. They love to garden, fish and enjoy each other’s company. My mother passed away on November 26, 2001 with her family at her bedside. Our Childhood I have great reverence and respect for the unpredictable power of the Pacific Ocean. Pelican Bay was a street and a field away from our old three-story house on Front Street where we lived in the small town of Crescent City California. The sounds of my childhood were that of a seafaring port. Each morning as the harbor came alive; I lay in my bed and listened to a buoy’s mournful horn, the squawk of sea gulls and the horns of tugboats and barges. The unending sound of the tide and the constant hiss of the wind, were soothing to me as a child. I have always enjoyed a good storm and I have never feared the wind. At times, the wind blew so hard that it rattled the windows and it would make the tall old house creak. If the wind was blowing from south to north, which was the direction our house was from the bay, the spray off the water would build up salt deposits around the panes of our living room and upstairs bedroom windows. Crescent City California, is a fishing port, lumber and tourist town. It is nestled beneath hills where forests of the majestic coastal redwoods grow. We did the normal things that kids do growing up; romping, playing, fighting, learning and getting a well deserved spanking for our misbehavior. Our life didn’t lack poignancy however, or unusual heartbreak. I was ten years old when my mother left us for a man she worked for. He was married with three children. When he left Crescent City, he moved his family to San Francisco. It wasn’t long after that my mother joined him. He kept up a double life. He paid for my mother’s apartment as his mistress, but went home to his wife at night. There are circumstances that surround a man like my dad who is left to raise four children without their mother; circumstances that are too poignant and painful to pen. It leaves a scene that only those who have experienced it, could possibly understand. Everyday was a challenge for our Dad. He had his faults, but taking his responsibilities seriously, was not one of them. He was young, just thirty years old when Mom left. He was 5’8” tall, with muscular arms, light brown hair and sky blue eyes. He could have had any woman he wanted and he could have pawned us off to relatives or foster care as a lesser man would have done, but my Dad was not and is not, a lesser man. His love for us outweighed any convenience that would have come with sending us away. Daddy worked as a lumber grader who started out in the mills pulling green chain. All day long he inspected, turned and marked the lumber as it came through the mill. He flipped Douglas fir and redwood boards with one arm, added the grade and sent it on, only to have another one come right behind it. He did this for eight hours everyday. Then, after Mom left us, he would come home to four little kids from ages ten to five; get dinner for them, play with them, teach them, clean house and do all the other chores it takes to run a house hold. When living on a wet, windblown coast made us stir crazy, he would make us put our rain gear on and run to the beach and back. If we were still too noisy, then he would make us do it again. When the boys fought with each other, he made them strap on the boxing gloves and “do it right.” Donny was in every fight, either with Tommy or Bobby. I can still see his skinny little arms just flying with those big brown gloves on. Daddy turned into a trainer and he would say, “don’t hit at him, box him.” He taught them to jab and to avoid leaving their noses exposed by swinging with roundhouse punches. The one thing that we did not do was get between him and the television on Friday nights when the fights were on. I still remember watching the fights with Daddy the night that we saw Emile Griffith kill Benny “The Kid” Parrett in the ring. It was on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports in 1962. Daddy was saying, “stop the damn fight, stop the fight!” I remember his face turning white when it came on the news that Benny Perrett had died. He felt sorry for both fighters. Daddy whittled pistols for the boys with his pocketknife. He bought them all Tonka trucks and bicycles. He dressed them in high top boots, blue jeans and flannel shirts and he barbered their hair with a buzz cut. He was strict about the way we talked and about lying to him. He didn’t drink or smoke and he didn’t want any profanity going on around me. That’s saying something with a town full of lumberman; log truck drivers and commercial fisherman. He had a routine for cleaning the house. Every weekend the house was swept from top to bottom filling the dustpan with sand. Then we mopped. Sand was in the sheets, in the cuffs of the boy’s jeans and in their ears. My job, as big sister, was to walk my little brothers to school. It was like herding three little squirrels. I helped the boys with their homework and took care of them after school until Daddy got home from work. I mended their jeans and gave them spankings and hugs. I would sing with them and taught them how to dance. In the summer time, Daddy hired baby sitters but after a week or two, they fled for their lives. It was a major frustration to him and a peril to my brother’s behinds. I’ll never forget the day they all stuck magazines down their pants, to lessen the sting of their inevitable spanking. I finally got old enough to be the baby sitter and we spent our summers on Front Street playing outside in the field, or on the beach. The following pages will give you accounts of others who survived the tidal wave of 1964. They are fascinating stories, both tragic and compelling. History: NPR.org Morning Edition, November 17, 2005 · “The Crescent City Harbor is one of the oldest in California. Lumbering and timber products are the major industries. Four waves struck the city. The travel time of the first tsunami wave to Crescent City was 4.1 hrs after the occurrence of the earthquake in Alaska. It caused no significant damage other than flooding.” On Good Friday in 1964, the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America struck Anchorage, Alaska. Shifting tectonic plates displaced billions of tons of ocean water and sent tsunami waves rushing at the speed of a jetliner down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The tsunami struck several coastal communities on that March 27, but its biggest punch Was saved for Crescent City, Calif., a small lumber and fishing town of about 3,000 residents just south of the Oregon border. It came by the light of a full moon in a series, it's believed, of four waves. The first wave caused only minor flooding of shops and stores in the small downtown area near the shore. But Crescent City residents were familiar with high water. They had also had their share of tsunami false alarms. So residents and shop owners weren't terribly distressed by the foot of water that flooded the lower blocks of downtown. The incredible story of The Clawsons and Clarence and Peggy Coon A report From Dateline NBC Crescent City, not some ancient megalopolis swallowed by the sea, but a sleepy waterfront town on the northern edge of California. Forty years ago it was struck by a killer tsunami. It was March 27, 1964, at 5:36 p.m. A 9.2 magnitude earthquake shook the seafloor under Valdez, Ak, triggering a tsunami that went hurtling down the West coast. Gary Clawson: “We just happened to be in the wrong place, the very worst place.” Gary Clawson, then 27 years old, owned a waterfront tavern in Crescent City, on around midnight after the initial wave hit and passed, he rushed to shore to check on his property. Along came both his parents and his fiancée. Clawson: “It just seemed like that it was over with.” Mack McGuire: “You don't forget something like that.” After hearing the monster wave had receded, Mack McGuire also headed to the shore, to check on his fishing boat. He couldn't find it, so he too stopped by the waterfront tavern, where he and the Clawson gang all marveled at the damage, assuming the worse had come and gone. But they were about to learn one of the most important lessons in handling a tsunami. Contrary to what you would often imagine, the first wave may not be the deadly one. Suddenly a second wave hit. McGuire: “Yes, very much surprised. I never had a wave like that hit me.” Clawson: “All of a sudden, I heard just kind of heard a rumble. And the whole west wall of that tavern just disappeared. It just crushed it in. Then all of a sudden the building itself, the whole tavern, left its foundation.” All were trapped on the tavern's roof, now barely above water. These two, then younger men swam off. Mack Maguire returned home to his wife, after lending a spare rowboat to Gary Clawson, who rushed to rescue his stranded parents and fiancée. They climbed onto the boat. The water was calm. Again, they all assumed the worse was behind them. Clawson: “I had never been through a tsunami. Had no idea that when the water went down, it would go back out as fast as it come in.” They had almost reached dry land, when the tsunami's huge force sucked them back toward the ocean. The water was pulling them violently at speeds upwards of 300 mph, toward a small underpass under the flooded highway. Within seconds, the boat crashed into the metal grate. Gary's father, mother, fiancée, and 3 other people on board all died. He was the sole survivor. Four waves struck crescent city that night. The largest was over 20 feet high. The tsunami washed away 29 city blocks and killed 11 people. Today there are still constant reminders of the tsunami here. Yes, it can happen again. The next one may be far bigger. Eleven people in all died in Crescent City that night in what became known as the worst tsunami in the history of America's lower 48 states. Susan Andrews of member station KHSU in Arcata, Calif., assisted in the reporting of this story. Lighthouse keeper Peggy Coon’s account of the tidal wave: "The water withdrew as if someone had pulled the plug. It receded a distance of three-quarters of a mile from the shore. We were looking down, as though from a high mountain, into a black abyss. It was a mystic labyrinth of caves, canyons, basins, and pits, undreamed of in the wildest of fantasies. "The basin was sucked dry. At Citizen's Dock, the large lumber barge was sucked down to the ocean bottom. In the distance, a black wall of water was rapidly building up, evidenced by a flash of white as the edge of the boiling and seething seawater reflected the moonlight. The Coast Guard cutter and small crafts, that had been riding the waves a safe two- miles offshore, seemed to be riding high above the 'wall' of seawater. |