California’s 5 most deadly, devastating tsunamis
The most devastating tsunami in U.S. history struck Crescent City, 20 miles south of the Oregon border, in 1964.
Fortunately, it appears that the Bay Area and the rest of California on Saturday escaped the worst kind of damage that can be inflicted by a tsunami.
Following the eruption of an undersea volcano near Tonga, surges of water flooded or threatened harbors and low-lying areas in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Berkeley and Marin County. The worst tsunami threat to the West Coast in more than a decade also prompted advisories, evacuations and beach closures up and down the coast. But by Saturday evening, it appeared that the region had dodged the tsunami bullet, with some damage to boats and property reported in Santa Cruz and other communities and no reports of major injuries.
But history offers more deadly examples of when massive tsunami waves, generated by earthquakes or volcanoes erupting an ocean away, have barreled into California’s coastal areas, flooding whole towns, tossing boasts inland, pushing buildings off their foundations and killing people. Here are the five worst tsunamis in California history.
Jan. 26, 1700: Using geologic evidence and oral histories from Native Americans, scientists have reconstructed the Cascadia earthquake, a magnitude-8 or 9 shaker that occurred in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 600-mile stretch between Cape Mendocino, south of Eureka, and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, as Wired and other publications reported. The earthquake unleashed devastating waves that inundated the West Coast and raced all the way across to Japan.
Dec. 21, 1812: A tsunami related to a magnitude-7.2 earthquake in the Santa Barbara channel caused flooding and other damage to low-lying areas of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. The temblor itself damaged several missions and Native American villages, while the tsunami was reported as far north as San Francisco. The waves also lifted up a 283-ton ship, which had been searching the coast for otter pelts, pushing up a half mile inland then carrying it back out to sea, the Los Angeles Times reported.
April 1, 1946: An undersea magnitude-7.4-magnitude earthquake off Alaska triggered a massive tsunami that killed 159 people in Hawaii, 2,400 miles south of the quake’s epicenter. It also hit the California Coast, with nearly 15-foot-high waves hitting areas near Half Moon Bay. The waves caused flooding, toppled beachside buildings near Half Moon Bay tossed fishing boats as far as a quarter-mile inland, according to the Half Moon Bay Review.
March 28, 1964: Crescent City, the one-time logging town just south of the Oregon border, became the site of the most devastating tsunami in U.S. history, according to Crescent City records. A magnitude-9.2 earthquake off Alaska’s produced a powerful wave, cresting at nearly 21 feet, that slammed into Crescent City’s downtown, killing 11 people and devastating 29 city blocks. More than 289 buildings and homes were damaged by rising waters or destroyed after being pushed off their foundations. Much of the city’s downtown had to be rebuilt.
March 11, 2011: Crescent City was again hit by tsunami currents, this time by those generated by the Tōhoku earthquake in Japan. The magnitude-9.0 earthquake, the most powerful ever in Japan’s history, and the tsunami combined killed more than 18,000 people there and they also unleashed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Powerful waves crossed the Pacific Ocean and caused $100 million worth of damage to California ports and harbors, including those in Crescent City and Santa Cruz, more than 400 miles to the south.