The quake struck at 5:36 p.m. on Good Friday, when schools and many offices were closed. It ruptured some 600 miles of fault and lifted or dropped parts of the coast by up to 38 feet. Landslides tore apart neighborhoods of Anchorage, and tsunamis devastated coastal towns such as Valdez, Seward and Chenega, and reached as far as California. About 139 people died, most of them in the tsunamis. Studies of it helped establish the theory of plate tectonics.
The shaking began at 5:36 p.m. beneath Prince William Sound and did not stop for four minutes and 38 seconds. In Anchorage, 75 miles away, the ground in the Turnagain Heights neighborhood slid toward the sea, carrying houses with it. Downtown, a section of Fourth Avenue dropped by more than 10 feet.
The worst destruction came from the water. At Valdez, an underwater landslide collapsed the waterfront and the dock, killing about 30 people who had gathered to watch a freighter unload. At the native village of Chenega, a wave killed about a third of the residents. Tsunamis crossed the Pacific: in Crescent City, California, they killed 11 people, and four children camping on a beach in Oregon also died.
The geologist George Plafker of the US Geological Survey mapped how the coast had risen and sunk, using lines of dead barnacles stranded above the tide. His work showed that the earthquake had occurred on a gently dipping fault where one plate slid beneath another, evidence that helped confirm the new theory of plate tectonics. Because it struck on Good Friday, with schools empty, the death toll was far lower than it could have been.
Key people: George Plafker