12
WHEN THE SUN ROSE
The tsunami roared past Crescent City and hustled south during the night. The quaint harbor town of Trinidad is located about an hour’s drive south from Crescent City. This town reported an eighteen-foot surge, comprised of a fourteen-foot wave on top of the four-foot high tide. However, the city is situated on the high side of a hill that’s well above sea level and didn’t incur damage. A two-hour drive to the south, the boat basin at Eureka also reported little damage, although the highest surge was eight feet over the low-lying streets of that town.
Located 125 miles away and halfway between Eureka and San Rafael/San Francisco, Noyo Harbor at Fort Bragg in Mendocino County was especially hard hit. As in Crescent City, it experienced four major waves over a period of nearly two hours. At about 12:30 A.M., or one-half hour after the tsunami rolled into Crescent City, the first wave surged into this harbor and over pilings normally ten feet above high tide. This initial surge sunk six large boats, snapped off pilings supporting the dock and boardwalk, and washed four skiffs out to sea. The second and third bores speeded upriver at thirty-five miles per hour in a series of stepped-up jumps. Overall, the tsunami sunk fifteen boats (half of them commercial fishing boats), damaged another one hundred (from slightly to total), and caused over half a million dollars of damage. The surges spun the forty-two-foot long, drag-fishing boat Lapaz around like a top, hurled the vessel one-quarter mile up the Noyo River, and drove it over a smaller boat. Fortunately, no deaths or injuries were reported.
There were four major crests around San Rafael, and the tsunami damaged or sunk over three hundred boats at Loch Lomond on San Pedro Point off San Rafael. The damage was estimated in excess of one million dollars. On both sides of the two-mile-long San Rafael Canal, the surges tore away all of the docks at this huge harbor from their moorings. At about 2:30 A.M., the tidal surf boiled past the breakwater through the wide mouth of the Loch Lomond Basin. It broke the end off a dock with twenty boats still moored to it. This crashed into a neighboring dock, causing that structure to crumple. The ocean movements lifted another dock over a levee with thirty boats attached to it, then drove this mass one-quarter of a mile away. By mid-afternoon the following day, debris littered the area and the ocean was still churning.
No injuries or deaths had been reported up to then in this area. In Bolinas, on the coast north of San Francisco, a man drowned at 3:00 P.M. the following afternoon. Isaac Dirksen lost his footing when a surge caught him during high tide. At the time, he was attempting to wade across a low-water channel. The thirty-four-year-old man was thirty feet from shore and wearing rubber-fishing waders. A three-foot high bore surged in, smashed him down into the ocean, and filled his waders with seawater. Dirksen couldn’t get up due to the current’s power. He disappeared from view, the ocean currents dragging his body out to deeper water.
When the tidal wave reached San Francisco Bay, it roared through the narrow Golden Gate opening and spread throughout the bay into the smallest inlet. Beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, the water level dropped eight feet in a matter of seconds prior to the coming of a four-foot wave. Newspapers reported that ten thousand people had lined the entire bay at the time to see the tsunami. They were lucky in that the first surge was the highest wave experienced there.
A forty-foot Coast Guard patrol boat was cruising near Belvedere opposite Angel Island, when the captain found his boat standing still, its props churning the mud at the bottom of the bay. The tidal wave had whipped the water out from underneath the vessel, damaging the boat’s propellers. A four-foot wave then rolled into Sausalito, causing boats to capsize, docks to rupture, and 100,000 dollars in damages (or over three-quarters of a million dollars in today’s money).
Starting at 12:15 A.M., eight-and-a-half-foot-high waves rushed in twenty-minute intervals through Monterey Bay south of San Francisco, but there were no reports of damage or injury as all of the boats were already out to sea. From Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz to Cayucos and Morro Bay on the California coast, boats were sunk, docks splintered, and fuel docks destroyed. The tide changed ten feet in ten minutes in Morro Bay, causing the harbor’s floating yacht club to splinter against its dock and sink a number of smaller boats.
The tsunami pushed further south and sank boats and damaged docks from Santa Barbara to Santa Monica and Marina del Rey. A mighty surge of ocean at Marina del Rey ripped out 450 feet of the dock that was operated by the Union Oil Company and shoved it one-half mile up the channel. At the Terminal Island complex near Los Angeles, surges of five to ten feet pummeled through the narrow Cerritos Channel, ripping away boats, docks, and walkways.
A longshoreman was killed in Los Angeles harbor when a cable snapped while he was loading cargo onto a ship, probably caused by the stresses on the cable from the vessel’s violent rocking in the high waves. While being moved by tugs, the huge Union Oil tanker Santa Maria ripped out a 175-foot section of the dock when the currents pushed the vessel against it. The backlash from its propellers then sank a nearby eighteen-foot boat. The surges disintegrated an entire dock landing and swept a row of twenty large boats, including one unmanned 110-footer, in a whirlpool out to sea. Abnormal tidal surges in San Diego Bay caused extensive damage to boats and floating concrete piers. A sixty-foot schooner, the Hispanola, broke loose and smashed into three pier pilings and an albacore boat.
The waves spun out from the Alaskan earthquake toward Hawaii and Japan in the opposite direction. The Honolulu Observatory (Pacific Tsunami Warning Center) estimated that the waves would hit Hawaii within five and a half hours, or about one hour after they began pounding into Crescent City. After the alert sounded, Governor John Burns, in a special radio broadcast, urged everyone to evacuate; 150,000 Hawaiians raced to higher ground in the middle of the night.
Fortunately and ironically, this tsunami caused no deaths in Hawaii, very few injuries, and only minor damage. Due to the orientation of the generating fault and strike line, the wave heights were smaller and caused little problems. Observers reported a maximum wave height of 12.5 feet (3.75 meters) from six surges starting at 1:00 A.M. in Hilo, Hawaii, with only four Hilo restaurants and a residence being flooded. Maui experienced some flooding, primarily to its immediate waterfront area. At 3:00 A.M., PST, the Honolulu Observatory sent its final bulletin. This was an all-clear message for Hawaii with all other “participants” (or countries) being advised to assume the same all-clear status two hours after their tsunami ETA, or estimated time of arrival, “unless local conditions warranted a continuation of the alert.”
Coincidentally, an earthquake reportedly struck portions of southern Louisiana that same day, causing sudden waves six feet high to churn up their rivers and bayous. Some small boats were overturned or smashed, but there were no reports of injuries or major property damage. Similarly, strange tides also hit Texas when six-foot tidal surges followed rough and choppy seas. At Port Arthur, Texas, a watchman reported that the tide dropped six to seven feet that night and a fully loaded grain ship “bobbed up and down like a cork.” Crews on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico reported five-foot drops in the tide with corresponding rises. These effects were also attributed to the Crescent City tsunami.
After the tsunami coasted into Japan around 3:00 A.M., the tidal surges reportedly did cause damage to pearl and oyster beds. However, Japan reported minimal damage; the sea wave here being no more than ten inches high. An eight-foot wave (2.4 meters) surged later into Ensenada, Mexico, as the tidal wave continued on its journey around the world. Sixteen hours after the earthquake, the tidal wave reached La Punta, Peru. The surges increased slightly in height as the waves raced into South America, and hit a maximum of seven feet (two meters) in Antarctica. The tsunami then coursed around the world again, but with much less force or effect.
All in all, only two people died after the tsunami roared past Crescent City. The tidal waves had slammed into Crescent City with more damage and fatalities than in Japan, Hawaii, and all other countries combined, reversing the experiences of past global tsunamis.
WHILE THE TIDAL WAVE ran south and hit other regions, radio station KPLY in Crescent City received telephone calls both from concerned residents and out-of-state people. When the tsunami severed the cables to wide areas of the city, its telephone lines and communications were also lost, but the station could continue operating since its electrical power was still on. Reverend John McMath, whose house was located across the street from KPLY, still had telephone service, so he volunteered the use of his phone for messages. After the station broadcast the Reverend’s telephone number over the air, information and bulletins were phoned in to him, then he ran them over to KPLY. Bill Parker then could pass on his important bulletins to Reverend McMath, who in turn ran them over to Virginia Deaver, and she announced them on the air. A portable two-way radio was put in use later between Reverend McMath and KPLY, speeding up the information transmitted—as well as making it easier on the good Reverend.
People jammed into KPLY’s studio trying to find missing loved ones or wanting somehow to assist. After the second wave retreated, the order to call the National Guard into action and all the doctors and nurses to the hospital went out over KPLY. People at the studio ran out to personally contact hospital personnel to ensure that they received the news. Responding to door knocks or telephone calls late at night, those in the outlying areas were shocked when they heard the news about the disaster.
KPLY focused on locating missing persons, then relaying this information to worried spouses and family members. The station was instrumental in helping to track down residents, as well as directing their listeners where to go for food, shelter, and clothing. Later, it broadcast valuable information on the cleanup, sanitation directives, housing, and the location of Red Cross facilities and food centers.
During the night and into the following day, it was unnerving for people who didn’t know what was going on to try unsuccessfully to find KPOD—it just wasn’t on the radio dial where it should have been. Then, when the listeners turned to station KPLY, they would hear:
Does anyone know where the two little children of Emma Post are? They were with their mother in the alley behind the Surf Hotel, when they became separated by the second wave. Please call any information in to us, as soon as you can. Also, Frank Tolscomb is trying to find his wife, Roberta. The third wave caught their car when they were driving on Second Street and overturned it.
FURTHER UP the Oregon coast, continuing high waves, surges, and abnormal tides sweeping back and forth during the night discouraged and disrupted efforts to locate the missing McKenzie children. The main search had to wait until daybreak. Rita McKenzie was listed in fair condition at the hospital in Newport, Oregon, having sustained deep cuts and abrasions from the pummeling by logs and rocks, both on land and in the ocean. Doctors treated both adults for shock at the hospital, although Monte McKenzie did not need to remain hospitalized.
The search intensified when the sun finally rose. Hearing about the lost children, people drove to the spot and offered their assistance. Other drivers simply stopped on Highway 101 and watched, solemnly, the rescue efforts going on below. Later that morning, the police discovered the body of Ricky, age six, buried under debris down the beach.
Newspapers across the country carried the accounts of the search over Easter weekend for the still-missing three children, as Lincoln County sheriff deputies, State Police, and Coast Guard personnel continued the search. The bodies of the three remaining children—Louis, age eight; Bobby, age seven; and Tammie, age three—were never found. Police discovered only remnants of the children’s clothing under a pile of driftwood along the beach. The family dog also had disappeared forever into the sea.
In Crescent City, Jim Burris couldn’t remember later how long he had held onto that telephone pole, but as the seawater mercifully retreated back, he stared down at his hand. The crush of the house against his life-saving perch had cleanly severed off one thumb.
Rescuers later discovered Juanita Wright in a state of shock, sitting on top of a car and holding onto her oldest child, Debra Lee. She and the child were taken to Seaside Hospital that night and treated for shock and exposure. Sadly but understandably, Juanita ebbed between bouts of hysteria and episodes of frozen shock over what had happened. The following morning, police discovered the drowned bodies of her baby boy, William Eugene, and little girl, Bonita Ione.
A gripping newspaper photo pictured the little baby boy’s body, wrapped in a soggy dark blanket, as it lay over the top of a black-and-white police car. A black-jacketed, white-helmeted policeman is staring down at the ground by one tire, gloved hands gripping his pockets tightly. One black boot rests on a large but crushed can. He can’t bear to look at the child’s body and the sadness of it all.
After being knocked unconscious, Joyce London didn’t remember anything until just before the dawn. Finally regaining consciousness, she discovered she was buried under a pile of logs across Highway 101, blocks away from where her home had once been. The ocean had carried her past the Shell Oil Station, close to where the Long Branch Tavern used to be, then swept her into wreckage and finally deposited her on top of it as more currents surged through.
Joyce was in great pain and cried out for help. Lapsing in and out of consciousness, she remembered finally being discovered by “some kid that was playing his guitar in a restaurant the night before. He found me and had to drag me into a cabin.”
She suffered a broken hand, two broken legs, seven broken ribs, deep facial bruises, brain damage, and numerous bruises and abrasions. Although the prognosis at first was poor, Joyce London lived, although she didn’t make a complete recovery from her injuries. She was hospitalized in Seaside Hospital for weeks, being seen later by Congressman Don Clausen when he visited the severely injured. But Joyce was the lucky one, as the surging shrapnel of debris, huge logs, and structures killed her best friend, Belle Hillsbery. London had no idea what had happened to Belle after the tidal wave separated them, nor did anyone else. The raging ocean also injured her husband, Paul, and Belle’s boyfriend, but both later recovered from their injuries.
By now, Peggy Sullivan was also at Seaside Hospital. She had broken her ankle and suffered numerous deep cuts and abrasions from the pummeling by the logs and debris. Her daughter received severe abrasions, as well, but both would eventually recover. Although her son was relatively uninjured, Peggy Sullivan, unfortunately, lost her baby. The unborn baby girl’s death was not listed as part of the official death total.
WHEN THE early morning sun rose to cast its warming hues on the city, the sights of the destruction and havoc wrought there seemed unreal and surrealistic. Splintered houses, crushed cars, twisted buildings, and smashed boats lay scattered over land and sea to the distant horizon. The Texaco bulk plant and gas stations still burned furiously with thick clouds of black smoke hanging over the town, the stench of the ocean and rotten fish filling the air. As people desperately searched for missing loved ones, flashing red lights and the Highway Patrol guarded the town. Structures or their remnants were left in crazy-quilt angles by and on streets. The city resembled a World War II disaster zone, and massive redwood logs, trees, and debris made passage by car impossible. That night, Armageddon had visited Crescent City.
Rescue operations commenced throughout the city, including the inland and ocean sides of Elk Creek Bridge. Divers in wetsuits bobbed back and forth in the river like so many seals, trying to locate bodies and confirm missing people. A large scoop or clam shovel clattered noisily into position on the bridge. The equipment soon began sifting through the wreckage packed between the bridge and grate.
The engine grumbled long and loud from the deep digging efforts, as diesel smoke poured out from the exhausts. Debris soon piled up on the bridge. Mac’s skiff was the first object to be located. The surge had pushed the boat through the culvert and under the main pile at the grate. The large shovel picked up the skiff and laid it carefully on the bridge, next to the other finds.
The next discovery was the body of Bill Clawson. The clam shovel unearthed the body of Gary’s father from deep inside the debris. He had been trapped like Gary under the same wreckage, but Bill had not been able to work his way out. After the authorities had restrained Gary Clawson a second time from getting into the recover y zone to search for his parents and friends, he and Bruce Garden went back again to Bruce’s home.
An hour and a half later, searchers located his mother, Gay. The tidal surges had washed her body back from the grate to the land side of the bridge and on the north bank of Elk Creek. They discovered her body buried under a mound of driftwood.
Nita and Joanie’s bodies were next located. Washed underneath or eventually through the grate, Nita’s body moved halfway down the river to the ocean, or some two hundred yards from the bridge where it was assumed she had died. The currents washed Joanie Field’s body into the harbor, all the way to the rocks of the breakwater. Head injury wounds on her body were massive, and the medical examiner couldn’t determine whether she had died from those injuries first or by drowning. The scattering of the bodies underscored the power of the ocean’s force that night.
That past night, Mac McGuire had waited for Gary’s return with some of the others. He courageously swam back two times trying to find the skiff and his friends, as the waves surged monstrously in and out. Given the currents, uncertainties, obstacles in the way, and efforts required at night, these were not simple feats. When he couldn’t find anyone, Mac gave up and went home. Once there, he found out that his son, Jerry, had taken his advice that if the waters ever looked unnatural, it was time to “beat it.” Jerry had done this in the nick of time.
Having given up drinking six months before, Mac fought the urge to have a drink “every five minutes for the next twenty-four hours.” His determination won and he stayed sober. Mac felt guilty that it was his boat that had overturned. “It was my skiff in that picture up on the bridge over the highway,” he said. “That was the one reason I had so damned much trouble later, as I was blaming myself for it.” However, Mac had done as much as anyone could ever have expected.
Workers also discovered the remains of the Long Branch Tavern that morning. The remnants were left exactly where Gary and Mac last saw them: in the grove of trees by the edge of Elk Creek. The structure was so mangled, the authorities burned everything on the spot. Gary’s green ledger book carried through the grate and washed all the way to the ocean. It sailed in the currents halfway to the jetty before washing up on a beach. In fact, checks made out to the Long Branch Tavern were discovered later, dried out, and handed back to Gary, along with some of the cash found in the rubble by the grate.
Later that day, Gary left Bruce’s house and headed to the home of his Uncle Fred, his mother’s brother, who lived in town. A doctor gave Gary a sedative shot there to settle him down, and he next drank one-half of a bottle of V.O. Scotch. However, nothing seemed to work. Nothing seemed able to stop the pain that Gary felt over his losses, especially when the reality of it all came crashing down. His sister, Ginny, was recuperating at the time in a Novato, California, hospital. She learned about her mother’s death while watching the cleanup efforts on television. The reporters were there when Gay’s body was discovered on the banks of Elk Creek and identified, and they quickly announced the news to Ginny’s shock.
After the workman discovered the bodies, Gary was walking slowly over the bridge in the afternoon. Logs, soiled merchandise, and driftwood were strewn over the structure, most dropped there by the steam shovel rooting through the rubble, some deposited earlier by the ocean’s overflows. He spotted a white object lying upright among the wreckage and between two large logs. It stood scant feet from where his father died.
On closer inspection, Gary discovered this to be a small, twelve-inch high statue of Jesus Christ. He first thought that the tidal waves had washed it from a curio shop. “There it was, standing so tall, amidst the ruins,” he said later. “It didn’t have a scratch or any discoloration from the ocean. The only thing it was missing was the felt backing, and that was easily replaced.” He didn’t know that national newspapers across the country had run the story and picture of the “small statue by the skiff on the bridge” until years later.
With funerals to plan and attend, Gary Clawson encountered his friend, Jim Burris. When they went to inspect the telephone pole where Jim had lost his thumb, they discovered that the severed appendage was still attached to the pole by the severing metal. Although they delicately removed the thumb, it could not be surgically reattached.
DAYLIGHT CREPT into the wreckage of Mabel Martin’s home. Peering upwards through the debris, she saw that the currents had ripped away an entire corner of her room. Parts of the roof, ceiling, and other debris still covered and pinned the old woman down painfully to her crumpled bed. As the sun rose in intensity with its warming colors, she saw “dirty rocks and gray mud outside.” Due to her hypothermia, she didn’t feel as cold now as she had during the night. Mabel said later, “I also saw the old electric light plant put up by the Hobbs and Wall Company. Then I realized how far I had gone. In all, my home had traveled over three blocks, and I was now near the Hamilton Brothers Mill.”
Her watery journey had come to an end in the middle of the field, west of the McNamara and Peepe Lumber Mill in the graveyard of debris deposited by the sea. Cars, houses, boats, furniture, clothes, and everything imaginable had been dumped here—including dear Mabel Martin with her mattress and the remains of her home. However, she was fortunate in landing where she did and not being dragged back into the sea. This would have happened if the house hadn’t caught on land, along with the other bounty held captive, before the sea reversed itself.
She wasn’t discovered until mid-morning that following day, over eight hours after the last wave hit. Mabel wrote later: “I was found at 10:30 A.M. the next morning with the nightgown I had on, my blankets, and mattress. I began to call for help, again and again, and finally a woman looking for her cow found me. I don’t know who she is, but I would certainly like to, and even feel like kissing her cow. Bless them both.”
It is possible that “the woman looking for a cow” had come by and then immediately left Mabel to find help. Ray Schach of Crescent City Lumber, Bernie McClendon, and two others, however, are the ones credited with hearing her cries and coming to her aid. Ray said, “When I heard her sounds, I thought that they had been made by a lamb.” It was ironic that Bernie McClendon helped pull the rubble off and free Mabel; not only was he her landlord and head of the local California National Guard, but he was also the last one to see her when he gave her the Easter candy. Rescuers immediately drove her to Seaside Hospital.
Once there, Mabel Martin was “so cold that I thought I would never get warm again.” While being treated for exposure, she took a cup of coffee but said, “I couldn’t even hold the cup, because I was shaking so badly.” Mabel had survived a trip, however, that even a young person would have found arduous, and she spent weeks in the hospital before recovering.
While a doctor stitched up their father at the hospital, Doug and Steve Pyke began drying out money at their grandmother’s house. The family had retrieved it later from their building after the tsunami left. It took a day or so for the money to dry out. The Pyke brothers recalled that sand had been piled over the floors, streets, and around the buildings in their area. However, it was the fish that stood out. “They were everywhere,” said Doug. “The ocean had left flounder, perch, and all other types around and inside our store—in fact, some were wedged inside the walls. I don’t know how they ever got there, given the small size of the cracks.”
His Uncle Bud had parked his brand new Jeep Wagoneer by the store, and the tidal wave had taken it away. The family discovered it later at the Safeway parking lot, deposited right side up as if it had just been picked up for a drive. When they first looked for the Jeep at their parking lot, the Pykes noticed that other people’s cars were smashed upside down or jammed on top of one another.
As the family stood in waist-deep water, hearing glass break and debris grind against the walls, their Uncle Bud suddenly remembered that a 1,100-dollar check (from selling the family’s electric organ the day before) was still in his wallet in a coat pocket. In the panic, Bud had left the coat draped over one of the cash register stations that was now probably swirling in the sea. The next morning, when the family searched through the rubble in their cleanup, they found the coat on the cash register—still dry with the check and wallet inside just where he had left it.
Ernie Pyke went directly home after being stitched up. That morning, the family headed back to clean up their store, startled at the destruction and debris they found. That day they encountered one of the rare problems with looters. The Pykes were taking merchandise out to dry in the parking lot, when “some people from Brookings” came by, grabbed some of their goods, and ran. “We were so tore up then by what had already happened, that all we could do was watch—but I could have shot them,” recalled Ernie.
However, Don Mather, Jim Howland, and John Howland guarded the cash in the registers and the safe at the Bay City Market that night, their loaded shotguns trained outside into the darkness. Any would-be looters were lucky to have avoided that place! Although the men represented the “private” army that had emerged to patrol and guard their stores and the town quite effectively that night, formal law and order needed to be reinstated.
Joe and Eleanor McKay lost everything to the ocean: all clothing, wallets and money, car keys, their glasses, and even the tools of his trade (he had brought along his cooking utensils). In fact, their only possessions were what they had on when jumping for their life from the motel unit, Joe wearing only a bathrobe, his wife grabbing a simple coat to wear over her nightgown. After a doctor stitched up Joe, the Reverend John McMath took the couple to the El Patio Motel for the night, and others gave them needed clothing.
The grader dropped Ruth Long off that early morning at the very top of L Street, away from the destruction below. Depending on their needs, evacuees were helped from there into awaiting cars for transport to the hospital or to the county fairgrounds where cots and tents were being set up, per Bill Parker’s emergency plan operation. She then recognized her dentist as one of the volunteer drivers, all being part of the plan. He drove Ruth, her baby, and their dog in his jeep to her aunt and uncle’s house located on higher ground. By then, Dale had located his mother, and they rejoined his family there, staying the night.
Diane Anderson had watched the tsunami from the upstairs window of her parent’s house, next to Seaside Hospital. Since she had worked at the hospital in admissions for several months before finding another job, she went to the hospital to help out. Injured people were coming in so quickly that Diane could only tape their names on their wrists and put them to bed or in a waiting area for further treatment. She vividly remembered Mrs. William Wright in the emergency room, “hysterical” over losing her two young kids and being treated then for shock.
Later that night, Roy Magnuson happily discovered that his house had not been damaged. After picking up a friend, they returned to help in the search and rescue efforts. At a beach motel, Roy searched through the ruins. “It was pitch black, as I remember it, and a very strange scene,” he said. They walked through dark rooms, water damage and destruction surrounding them, with no lights to guide them except for their flashlights. They saw “lots of things scattered about, like alarm clocks, luggage, clothing, and suitcases—but there were no people. No one was there.”
Near daybreak, Roy and his friend left for home, hoping that most everybody had been able to get out safely. Roy discovered that morning that the tidal waves had sunk his thirty-two-foot salmon boat. Tied to concrete mooring pads, the high surges ripped it apart when the boat couldn’t rise past its moorings. Some fishermen were able to refloat their boats by pulling them toward land during high tide, then repairing them when the tide was low, and refloating the vessels during the next high tides. Unfortunately, his was not one of them.
Richard Wier was ten years old at the time; his parents’ house was located outside the inundation area, so his family was one of the luckier ones. He remembers when the police awakened his father that night to help with the dead and injured. His father not only owned Wier’s Mortuary, but the local ambulance service as well. As the city’s sole ambulance had just broken down, this meant that his father also owned the only other ambulance in town. It was in use the entire night and for several days afterwards.
The day after the sea wave hit, Richard and his friends played in the slough by his dad’s mortuary, located at Fourth and G Streets. An open swale or “indented” swamp area of two square blocks was across the street from his dad’s building. Tons of merchandise, including the canned goods and products from the Bay City Market, swirled around and had been deposited there. As kids, they had fun exploring what had been left there, from picking over the merchandise to finding one Confederate dollar. As Richard said, “It was like a ‘gold mine’ of things for kids to explore and find.”
Upon returning to his store in the morning, Glenn Smedley of G&G Liquors found only heaps of broken glass inside. The liquor left on a top shelf had the labels washed off. Health officials then condemned all the food and bottles that were even left in the downtown stores that night. “They dredged out a spot at the landfill,” he said. “The trucks dumped their loads of bottles and debris into it, and then a Caterpillar tractor ran over each load. Whatever was flammable was burned.” Glenn remembered the cleanup as a time when the whole community worked together. “There were so many people affected by it,” he said, “that it brought the county together.”
WITH INFORMATION now speeding in, the full extent of the deaths, injuries, and destruction was staggering. Eleven people had died, scores were missing, and over sixty people were injured. “Frenchy” Arrigoni and James Parks died in the same area near Seaside Hospital, the site of savage currents that reached the steps of that building. Bill and Gay Clawson, Nita and Earl Edwards, and Joanie Fields drowned on the western side of town under the Elk Creek Bridge. Lavella (Belle) Hillsbery and Juanita Wright’s two children died in the Highway 101 South area. Given the unsuccessful results of the searches, the authorities presumed that Sergeant Donald McClure had drowned in the Klamath River, fifteen miles away.
Not counted in the official Crescent City account is the loss by Peggy Sullivan of her unborn child. Orin Magruder, 73, died at home of a heart attack and is sometimes mentioned as a casualty, although a few accounts report that he died quietly in his sleep. The four McKenzie children drowned further north in Oregon.
People who chose to stay inside and ride the waves out had fewer injuries, although this depended entirely on where their home was located and whether it was in the direct path of the ocean. Most fatalities occurred when people fled outside with nowhere else to go. Some rode the waves on extraordinary journeys, living to tell about it. Those who died carried their stories with them forever.
The tidal surges didn’t stop, even after the last big wave receded. During that early morning and into the following day, the bay and Elk Creek experienced extraordinary surges as the ocean tried to regain its equilibrium. Searchers and shocked residents alike kept a wary eye towards the abnormal seiching and rapid in-and-out tide movements. In fact, several rescue and cleanup operations shut down entirely when the nearby boiling surf became too unnerving.
Family members poured into the Sheriff’s Office or tried to talk their way into the downtown areas, searching for missing loved ones. The official list of the missing at first was set at fifty and even higher by some newspaper accounts. The numbers of transients and tourists passing through or in the bars and motels hit by the waves made it difficult to establish a clear casualty list.
The man who Guy Ames and his friends watched disappear was never seen again. When the teenagers later matched descriptions of that individual with the official missing list, there was no record of him. Not being listed as officially dead or missing is misleading. In order to make the count of who was “officially” missing, the authorities needed to know that a specific person was in town that night, he or she wasn’t around afterwards, and their whereabouts could not be ascertained later.
Bill Whippo and Deputy Sheriff Jim Custer later tried to locate the driver and the Plymouth that the tsunami sped Whippo past on his ride inland over the Highway 101 South area. Bill knew the type of car, as he said, by the “fins on the back.” The two men checked all over the area, including searching the various mounds of trucks and cars piled on land. Whippo never found the car or its driver.
People drove up and down the coast all the time, looking for a job or visiting friends from Seattle to Los Angeles. When someone disappears without a trace, no one would know how or when that specifically took place. Some investigators believe that is what happened in Crescent City with several “unofficial” deaths, especially given this event’s calamity and power.
A twelve-year-old boy, Michael Stevens, told Governor Brown what he had seen. Michael was staying with his parents at an oceanfront motel as the family drove home to Redmond, Washington. After the high waters had driven them to an upper floor, the boy watched “an elderly man and his wife” struggle through the swirling waters below. The woman fell, as the man tried to pick her up. The governor quoted the boy as saying, “Then a car came along with nobody in it and hit them. I never saw them again.”
The official list was pared down over several days to fifteen, and one man listed in the newspapers as missing did eventually return. Sheriff’s deputies were tipped off and subsequently located Frank D. Sobrero, age forty-four, who was “missing.” They arrested him on a warrant for failing to follow the terms of his probation.
The authorities finally narrowed its official list down to three missing persons, although this number is still contested. At that time, Tuttie Clark, Robert Mertz, and Erick Lundberg (believed to be driving a 1956 Ford station wagon with Oregon plates) were listed as missing. Some residents say they aren’t missing; others maintain that more than three people passed through from other states, the ocean quickly sweeping away their cars or tents and forever washing away all the evidence out to sea.
PEOPLE JAMMED into Seaside Hospital. Twenty-five injured tsunami victims initially were brought in, joined by others desperately trying to locate missing family members or friends. The injured had severe cuts and bleeding, broken legs and limbs, concussions, broken backs, shock, and other severe injuries. The hospital tried to get its staff back in, but all of its telephone lines were out. The people on duty could only try and comfort those who were searching for others and refer them to the sheriff’s department.
No business was conducted that morning, as the tsunami had destroyed or caused major damage to 150 businesses. Just twenty-nine commercial operations incurred only minor damage, and two thirds of the businesses in the city had been wiped out completely or weren’t able to operate. A combined total of 290 businesses and homes had been destroyed or damaged, including ninety-one homes and nineteen trailers.
The tidal waves had severed or ripped out telephone, sewer, water, and gas lines in numbers of areas, including downtown and Highway 101 South, and over four hundred people were homeless with another 150 temporarily forced out. The bodies of dead animals, from cats and dogs to horses and cows, were scattered over land and sea. The Greyhound bus station was destroyed, leaving just an outer shell and its cement floor lifted three feet higher.
There were no food, clothing, or transportation centers available within close-by parts of the city, as no restaurants, grocery stores, bus stations, or even barbershops could open inside the inundation area. In fact, Safeway and all other markets had to throw away all of the food they had on stock, given the extent of destruction to their facilities and state regulations.
Barreling inland one to two miles over a twelve-mile swatch of the city and its surroundings, the retreating waves left behind a huge amount of debris, including 2.5 million board feet of lumber widely scattered around, one thousand wrecked cars, numerous shattered buildings, and thousands and thousands of fish from the ocean. Fish were everywhere, in hanging flower baskets, rafters, drawers, walls, trees, and clumped in large piles. When Dale Long opened his car trunk, some distance from where he had parked it, he found it loaded down with fish.
The tidal waves had splintered numbers of houses or spun them from their foundations, and the remnants littered the streets at crazy angles. Huge four-foot wide or wider redwood logs had slammed completely through entire buildings; some smashed through walls in one place, then crashed through another portion when the seas receded. The walls of hotels, motels, and other buildings bulged out, showing the ocean’s force when it receded back so powerfully. Land where apartment buildings once stood now looked like trashed parking lots.
Boats, logs, smashed houses, overturned trailers, merchandise, cars, and debris littered the land and ocean for miles. Parking lots, streets, sidewalks, and streetlights had been swept away. The seawall on Front Street was gouged out in wide stretches with deep canyons left behind. Nearly all the trees were uprooted, houses and trailers washed completely away for long distances, and the asphalt topping on streets sheared off. Mud, silt, sand, and seaweed were heaped around and over the driftwood, lumber, wrecked cars, and huge logs left in heaps and elephant-graveyard depositories. A stench of salt water, decaying seaweed, dead fish, and burning gasoline pervaded the air.
The surges trashed automobiles and dumped several on top of one another in high heaps. Cars were stacked three, even four high, with the lighter trunks of some washed over and slammed onto the heavier fronts of others. Vehicles had been slammed through storefront windows and buildings, jammed upside down, wrapped around telephone poles, propped up on parking meters, rolled over and over into twisted metal shells, or swept out to sea. Buckner’s Used Car lot looked like its cars had been stirred with a giant mixing spoon, the currents leaving five cars stacked against one light pole at its front. Sand was left behind, sometimes up to two inches, but less than expected due to the tsunami’s strong receding power.
AT THE HARBOR, the tidal waves sank or capsized fifteen commercial fishing vessels that were thirty feet long or more; three ships were never found and seven destroyed in the supposedly protected moorage area between the sand barrier and Citizen’s Dock, when the tidal waves turned 180 degrees around and powered their way into that secluded area. These surges slammed the vessels against one another and the inside jetty. The ocean washed one boat completely over the fuel dock, lodging this one between the dock and an inner sea wall, while smashing others over the beach and inland areas.
The tsunami’s actions had capsized, destroyed, or sunk a total of twenty-five commercial fishing boats, due in part to their being moored at both ends while the ocean surged forward, then sucked back to leave the boats wallowing in mud. Boats weren’t in the harbor as they should be, but instead far inland, smashed against buildings, or capsized miles away in the ocean. Numbers of pleasure boats and smaller craft had disappeared forever, and the coastal waters were a deep, murderous brown in place of the usual blues. The bay was littered at its bottom and nearly solid in places with destroyed cars, boats, appliances, logs, and lumber. Carried down from the logging camps of Washington and Oregon, tens upon tens of thousands of logs covered the beaches and coastal waters for miles in both directions.
The wave actions hit Citizen’s Dock particularly hard. In 1950, Del Norte County citizens had raised 250,000 dollars in cash and materials, then donated the time to build this vital commercial wharf. They had added improvements to the dock over time, such as a small-boat launching facility, fish wing, commercial fish-unloading facility, and various buildings. The facilities included a small boat basin, floats, and docking areas.
The ocean’s sudden draining and surging back numbers of times battered and twisted the dock out of shape, including damaging beyond repair or washing out over one-half of its support pilings. A huge lumber barge was tethered to the dock; it was 210 feet long with a fifty-five-foot beam and drew fifteen feet of water. A similar but empty lumber barge was floated out to sea from Brookings harbor as a precautionary measure. Unlike those circumstances, the Crescent City boat was not only fully loaded with over a million board feet of lumber, but also securely tied to its dock. The violent waters forced this heavy vessel up, over, down, and under the dock, and the barge smashed every part of the pier that it rammed into. The currents also swept over the barge, carrying lumber away and scattering it over the bay, city, and surrounding coastline.
After the tsunami passed, Citizen’s Dock had buckled and the Coast Guard Station and Harbor Commission Building had washed out to sea, along with the boats, cars, and fishing boats. Located across the street from the Harbor Grotto, the Dock Cafe and Sea Scout Building were both washed into the Olson Shipping Company’s lumberyards. They were smashed beyond repair and wedged against other shops, mounds of fish, and overturned boats.
The wave actions scattered lumber from Citizen’s Dock, the Olson and Pacific Inland Navigation shipping companies, and other nearby lumber companies over the ocean, Crescent City, and Highway 101. The tidal waves tossed other smaller buildings and shops around like the boats, easily destroying or sweeping them into the bay. Numbers of cars and trucks bobbed up and down in the harbor, along with the capsized vessels and other debris.
Cranes, winches, forklifts, and other heavy equipment were also sucked into the sea. The concrete wave barrier protecting the small boat area by Citizen’s Dock had been broken up, and deep channels gouged through beach areas when the tidal waves receded. The savage runoffs tore streetlights and parking meters from their concrete foundations or bent them at right angles, dug out and laid bare corrugated steel drainage culverts, and cut away a deep section of Front Street that was 150 feet long, ten feet wide, and five feet deep.
Dutton Dock on the other side of the Harbor survived, as the tidal surges weren’t as strong there. This private lumber dock was also well engineered with steel straps, cross-bracing, and bolted connections between the decking and supporting piles. The Sause Dock was adjacent to the Dutton pier. It had been abandoned for several years and was in a state of decay. The surges cleanly lifted away all of the remaining decking and tossed this around the harbor.
The tsunami tore away nearly all of the channel buoys and carried them far out to sea. The harbor would need to be dredged and cleaned up, as sunken debris now littered its bottom. Sand silted the bay in wide areas and required substantial dredging. The receding ocean scoured away new channels, including one that was eighty feet wide and stopped in deep ocean.
Constructed with 1,975 twenty-five-ton, concrete tetrapods (huge, four-pronged structures that look like giant jacks and fit together), the outer breakwater by the Lighthouse still stood. To keep the heavy seas from destroying this important barrier, in 1956–1957 the Army Corp of Engineers had interlaced the tetrapods on the seaward side of the outer breakwater. The tetrapods remained basically intact, despite the savage flows that ran back and forth. However, even on this jetty, repair work would need to be completed.
When daylight finally came, Peggy Coons and her husband saw that the commercial fishing boats that had found safety rode in the offshore swells. Bouncing over the sea during the night, one of the fishing shacks had finally sunk. The boat that had magically slid up Elk Creek was now on land, inside the destroyed Olympic Pool by the beach. Peggy observed:
The whole beachfront was a mass of destruction. Logs, boats, furniture, cars, along with buildings were tossed helter-skelter. The lumber from three big yards was high on the beach or floating around in the water. The two small buildings, along with cars that had washed off the dock, had faded from sight. Some of the boat landings and small crafts were sailing around on top of the ocean in a dizzying pattern.
At midday, the tide flowed in and filled the basin so full that it ran back over the breakwater. The big tug returned, hooked onto the lumber barge, and pulled it back out to sea. The other boats came in, hovering around the Coast Guard cutter. The silent killer, after taking its toll of life and property had left. Isolated on the island, we watched the search begin the next morning along Elk Creek for bodies.... It was hard to believe that, of all the things that floated by, the only bit of salvage to reach the island was one spool of lavender thread!
As the violent ocean surges around the Battery Point Lighthouse were continual over this time, they kept the captured objects and debris in constant motion. These ended up either inland or in the ocean, but could never come to a rest at this place.
The oil tanks at the Hussey-Texaco bulk-oil plant continued to burn out of control with dense smoke billowing over the area. Adjacent structures such as Nichol’s Pontiac, service stations, and adjoining shops had burned to the ground or were severely damaged. Other fires followed these, including a home in a housing tract that caught fire at 2:00 A.M. on Sunday morning, twenty-four hours after the last tidal-wave action. Fortunately, the husband and wife had led their six children to safety from the house, so no deaths or injuries occurred there.
Neither the owners nor their neighbors had been able to telephone this fire disaster in, since phone service was still cut to this area. The alarm couldn’t be given to any authorities until one neighbor drove away and finally located a California highway patrolman, then directing traffic around the disaster area. The patrolman radioed in the alarm. By the time the seventeen firemen and volunteers arrived, the flames had consumed the entire structure.
The experiences of the Crescent City fire department and others are very typical as to what happens with tsunamis. Fires are a natural, terrifying outgrowth of tidal waves. The powerful currents hurl debris against gasoline storage tanks, butane or propane tanks, gas tanks, gas lines—anything storing flammable liquids or gases—easily puncturing or ripping them apart. The volatile fluids and gases are quickly ignited when tanks collide, sparks shower from shorted electrical wires, power poles topple into gasoline pools, or any number of other ways.
Fire crews are hamstrung in their firefighting efforts, and confusion reigns with wrong decisions made. The tidal waves can inundate or earthquakes destroy fire department vehicles with their drivers. Street damage and obstacles hinder firemen from getting to the conflagrations. Communication systems are down or very badly damaged, thus adding more delays to response times. Even when equipment and fire personnel are in place, everyone must be continually on guard so that they don’t become victims of another towering surge. All of these risks and problems occurred in Crescent City.
Only the courageous efforts by the firefighters prevented the flames from spreading to the entire city, even though they couldn’t do much about what had already happened. That by itself was a major accomplishment.
ALTHOUGH THE SUN had come out, the land and streets were just one color that day: a dirty gray from the tons of mud and silt left behind. There were no birds at the beaches. There were no dogs or cats playing with children, just mud and debris and destruction. People cried out and searched frantically for the missing—and wreckage from Crescent City had been strewn down the California coastline as far south as San Diego and Mexico.
Unsuspecting officials were crestfallen when they learned that morning about the extent of the destruction. Serving years later as the Mayor of Crescent City, Bob Seligman, recalled, “I came home and went to bed. I didn’t know anything had happened.” Seligman lived on the far west side of town, which is high above the low-lying areas. A friend called him up the next morning and asked if his business had survived the tidal wave. “What tidal wave?” replied Seligman with bewilderment. Later that day, he worked his way downtown and viewed the destruction. He couldn’t believe what he saw.
Bernie McClendon heard the news about the impending tidal wave on television. A realtor, commander of the local National Guard unit, and a county supervisor, Bernie raced downtown to meet Chief of Police Andy Keyzers. McClendon rode around with Andy and helped alert people about the possible danger, telling them to evacuate at least to Fifth Street. While they were making their rounds, another surge brought water and debris over the Front Street curb past Second Street. As the damage to structures appeared limited, even Bernie headed back home to watch television. He learned later about the last large waves when the lights at his home blacked out and he heard the fire alarms wailing. His wall clock showed that the time of the blackout was 1:46 A.M. Then, Norman Wier of Wier Mortuary knocked on his door and told him that most of the downtown had just been destroyed. Bernie toured the area later that day and wrote:
I, as Company Commander, made an inspection and found that from the south city limits near the Breakers Motel on Highway 101, the highway was blocked by debris and displaced buildings. Within the tangle of building materials, logs of all description, and downed power and phone lines, only foot traffic was possible.
Front Street was littered with debris of all kinds from partially demolished buildings to just about anything one could imagine. Our two office buildings and the house where Mrs. Mabel Martin lived had vanished and the concrete building at Front and M was standing but damaged. Further down the street toward the Seaside Hospital, the Royal Motel and Thunderbird Motel had endured severe damage. Cliff Moore’s place was buckled and where the present B Street is, a trailer had been upended and was sticking high into the air.
On Second Street, going back easterly, I found the devastation even greater. Several buildings had been completely destroyed or badly damaged, and even the two-story Odd Fellows’ Masonic Temple had been torn lose from its foundation and moved. Numbers of automobiles were tossed about and lodged against power poles, buildings, or stacked one on top of another.
The old Ford Agency building, leased by Harold Thoreson, was blocking Second Street, and around all of it was scattered merchandise and slime from the ocean. To the best of my recollection, every building along Second Street, and those between Front and Second Street, were destroyed or suffered extensive damage—such as at the Tides. Trehearne’s building had buckled so that the sides were bulged, and Hiller’s Service Station was completely missing. The old Piggly Wiggly building (occupied by Bob Ames) was standing, as was Glen’s Bakery, but both had suffered extensive damage. Several automobiles were twisted around a power pole in front of Ames’s Store. At the corner of Second and N, Crescent City Lumber Company’s building had moved and stacks of lumber that had been decked were no longer visible.
On Third Street, the damage was obvious. G&G Liquor store took a beating with considerable merchandise floating with the tide. The same held true with the Ben Franklin store and the old Safeway, now where Beno’s located. Daly’s and First Western Bank were badly damaged, along with houses and homes clear up to Fifth Street.
Damage along Highway 101 south of town was equally depressing, and at the harbor, the Grotto and other buildings had taken a devastating beating. As the water in the bay receded before surges, fishing boats and crafts in the bay settled on the sand. Those that remained upright floated clear as the water came back, but those boats and crafts that had turned on their sides filled with water and were inundated, creating serious salvage problems for their owners.