April 15, 2022

The Long Blue Line: “The land turned to liquid”—Coast Guard operations in the Great Alaska Earthquake

The land turned to liquid. A long slice of the seaward edge of the plain…a section nearly a mile long and as much as six hundred feet wide-compacted, slumped, and then slid into the bay… men tumbled into the water, grasping for anything – timbers, boxes, debris-to stay afloat. One clung to the side of the fissure before he too, fell in. In the