[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 49 (Thursday, March 27, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1800-S1803]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    RECOGNIZING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT ALASKA EARTHQUAKE

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the 
consideration of S. Res. 400, submitted earlier today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (S. Res. 400) recognizing the 50th anniversary 
     of the Great Alaska Earthquake, which struck the State of 
     Alaska at 5:36 p.m. on Good Friday, March 27, 1964, honoring 
     those who lost their lives in the Great Alaska Earthquake and 
     associated tsunamis, and expressing continued support for 
     research on earthquake and tsunami prediction and mitigation 
     strategies.

  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the 
resolution.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, over the past several days we have 
all watched the news of the massive landslide in Washington State. We 
have watched that with sadness, with shock--truly an awful, awful 
episode. Our hearts, our prayers are certainly with all of those who 
have been affected by this terrible tragedy. We continue to hope for 
the best as rescue and recovery efforts continue.
  Today I have come to the floor to speak about a different natural 
disaster. This is a natural disaster that affected Alaska on Good 
Friday exactly 50 years ago today, in 1964. This is the Great Alaska 
Earthquake, the Good Friday Earthquake, the epic earthquake of 1964.
  At the time that Alaska was struck by this massive earthquake, I was 
a young child. I was living in the southeastern community of Wrangell, 
AK. I have a map here, a map of the State of Alaska. The epicenter of 
the earthquake is here in the south central area. About a year prior to 
the quake, my family and I moved down to the small southeastern 
community of Wrangell, tucked safely in the inland passage waterways 
here.
  We were all looking forward to Easter. When the earthquake hit, I 
certainly did not know that we had been struck by a massive, massive 
9.2 earthquake of the magnitude on the Richter scale that decimated 
southcentral Alaska. The earthquake struck at 5:36 in the evening. I 
did not know that what had just occurred was the largest earthquake to 
strike the United States in recorded history. It is the second largest 
earthquake ever recorded on modern instrumentation.
  Those of us who lived in Alaska at the time have memories of what 
happened on Good Friday 50 years ago. We have stories that will live 
with us for generations and passed down from generation to generation. 
You can talk to Alaskans about it: Where were you in the quake of 1964?
  We had just moved, as I said, from Anchorage to Wrangell, AK. We did 
not feel the shake in Wrangell. We waited

[[Page S1801]]

for the big waves to come. We waited for the tsunami. We sat listening 
to the radio. But our home was situated directly on the beach. Everyone 
was told to move up to higher ground. So we moved everybody in the 
family, five kids at the time, up the hill. We went to my first grade 
teacher's house, which was really quite exciting for me.
  We were allowed to stay up late into the evening. As a small child, 
there was a buzz. It was kind of exciting but kind of scary because we 
did not know what was happening in other parts of the State. My mom had 
basically packed some diapers for the smallest of the children in the 
family. She tells me that she brought along her silver tea set. That is 
the only thing that she brought from the house, along with the five 
kids.
  We also tell the story of the home that we lived in just before we 
had moved to Wrangell. It was situated in a residential area called 
Turnagain. Turnagain was the area that was immediately and massively 
hit.
  This is the Turnagain neighborhood. Our home that we lived in prior 
to moving to Wrangell was situated about two blocks back from the 
bluff. After the earthquake, the bluff slid down taking tens and tens 
of houses with it. The home that we were in then became bluff property. 
It was condemned never to be lived in again.
  We all have stories of the earthquake. We saw the news accounts as 
they came slowly to us. We saw the photographs of the collapsed 
buildings.
  I am going to go back to the first picture here. This first one that 
was up initially is downtown Anchorage, AK, 1964. This is on Fourth 
Avenue. You can see from the picture the ground just sunk, dropped--the 
crumpled buildings, the cars cattywumpus.
  The destruction and the devastation in the downtown area literally 
took your breath away. One very photographed picture was the J.C. 
Penney building which had just recently been constructed. The whole 
front facade of the J.C. Penney building just crashed down onto the 
streets and onto the cars below.
  This is a picture here of Government Hill Elementary School. I showed 
you the previous picture where my family and I had lived in the 
neighborhood at Turnagain when I was a child. When my husband and I 
bought our home, where our sons were raised, it was directly across the 
street from this property where Government Hill Elementary literally 
slid down the hill.
  As you can see from the picture there, the devastation to the school 
was extraordinary. Fortunately, it was 5:36 in the evening on Good 
Friday, and there were no children at the school. But the devastation, 
the visual impact that still remains as we look back 50 years now at 
what happened--the stories of loss of property, of damage to property, 
the stories of loss of life and truly miraculous survival--slowly 
started to reveal the extent of the destruction from an earthquake that 
Federal scientists would tell us years later was roughly equivalent to 
100 million tons of TNT exploding--massive.
  The Good Friday Earthquake reshaped the Alaska landscape. Land was 
lifted 33 feet in some places, and then in other places it sank in the 
ground--sank as much as 6 feet in places. Cliffs and buildings 
crumbled, forests and towns were flooded. Huge waves approximately 200 
feet high were measured near the community of Valdez. A 200-foot wall 
of water was coming into the community of Valdez. Communities were 
literally washed off the map in Anchorage.
  This is a picture here of Seward, which again is in Resurrection Bay 
along the coast, but the waves literally came in and swept everything 
out with it. But it was not just one wave. It was a series of waves. 
Anchorage, which is our State's most populous city and really the 
center of infrastructure in the State, was just 74 miles from the 
epicenter of the quake.
  That is where we see so many pictures of the tremendous damage there. 
There has been a series of articles in our local newspaper, the 
Anchorage Daily News, leading up to this historic 50th anniversary. It 
is a series written by Mike Dunham. I ask unanimous consent that a 
portion of these series be printed in the Record.
  But in the series discussing the tsunamis that hit Alaska, I would 
like to share with my colleagues some of the information that Mike 
outlined. He said NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center puts the 
total number of deaths resulting from the Great Alaska Earthquake of 
1964 at 139. Fifteen of those deaths are attributed to falling 
buildings or crumbling ground during the quake itself. The rest were 
killed by the water. Thirty-two people died when a wave 30-feet high 
built up in Valdez. Similar-sized waves took 12 lives in Seward, and 15 
in Kodiak and its surrounding villages. Another dozen perished when a 
wall of water 40-feet high smashed into Whittier in the Prince William 
Sound village of Chenega. One-third of the population, 23 people, were 
swept away by a 90-foot wave.
  One thing that I found very fascinating in understanding some of the 
attributes of this earthquake and the tsunamis that came is that in 
many places the ground was still shaking when the water hit. Keep in 
mind, this earthquake lasted 4\1/2\ minutes--4\1/2\ minutes where the 
earth is lurching and shuddering and shaking. That is a horribly long 
time.
  The first tsunami that hit Valdez, I am told, hit just 2 minutes 
after the quake had begun. So imagine the terror. You have got the 
ground moving all around you, up and down, lurching back and forth, and 
2 minutes into it, you have a tsunami at your doorstep.
  The loss of life from the tsunamis did not stop at the Alaska border, 
though. Four children died in Beverly Beach State Park in Oregon; 12 
people died in California, mostly in the waves that destroyed Crescent 
City's harbor.
  But we know that it could have been much worse. The death toll was 
low for an earthquake of this magnitude. As I mentioned, it was after 
work. It was on a holiday.
  It occurred in an area with a small population that constructed 
buildings from wood, not bricks or other heavier materials. But the 
Good Friday Earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis that followed caused 
some $3.75 billion in damage and that is in today's dollars. This is 50 
years ago, so $3.75 billion is amazing.
  Also, consider this was largely done to a State that was barely 5 
years old, but the impacts reached far beyond Alaska. Tsunamis also 
caused damage to many of our Pacific neighbors, including Canada, 
Washington, Oregon, California, Washington, and Hawaii.
  Those tsunamis destroyed everything in their path. They destroyed 
houses, cars, boats, and fishing gear all along the Pacific coast. In 
Ocean City, WA, a bridge over the Copalis River collapsed. In Crescent 
City, CA, a dockside tavern was destroyed. In Hilo, HI, 12.5 foot waves 
overran the waterfront. Seiches, which are seismically induced water 
waves in rivers, lakes, bayous, and harbors, caused minor damage. It 
wasn't extensive damage, but it caused damage along the gulf coasts of 
Louisiana and Texas. Think about how this massive earthquake 
reverberated around the world.
  If we look again to the map that has the epicenter, we would think 
the extent would only be where the epicenter lines, the falt limits go, 
but in fact when we account for the tsunami effect, it truly was an 
amazing instance where Mother Nature came together in a massive and a 
violent way.
  As we think about the devastation, the loss of life, the lost 
property, we have to ask the question whether anything good can come 
from a tragedy such as the Good Friday Earthquake, but I think the 
answer is ultimately yes. We came together, Alaskans came together in 
the aftermath of the quake and the tsunamis to help rebuild the worst 
hit communities. We rebuilt them to withstand earthquakes and in 
locations that are hopefully protected from the ravages of future 
tsunamis. We set aside parks to remember the historic earthquake and to 
prevent future building on landslide-prone cliffs. Out of the 
devastation we did gain a better understanding of what is happening 
below the surface in Alaska and other earthquake-prone areas.
  In the 1960s we had very little information about what caused the 
massive shifts in the Good Friday Earthquake. There was very little 
understanding of the giant tectonic plates that make up the surface of 
the Earth and how their movement causes earthquakes. The 1964 
earthquake resulted in greater seismic monitoring across the country

[[Page S1802]]

and has led scientists to have a far better understanding of how 
earthquakes occur and where they occur. We can now better protect our 
citizens by implementing better building codes and preparing for 
earthquake disaster response in earthquake-prone regions, thereby 
reducing the chance that another earthquake would result in so many 
deaths.
  The tsunamis that were spawned by the Good Friday Earthquake provided 
scientists with a unique and important set of tsunami arrival times and 
heights that have been used to validate new models of tsunami 
propagation. These models have allowed our scientists and emergency 
authorities to warn coastal populations of potential tsunamis, 
protecting life and property.
  We see these exercises and drills conducted certainly in my State, I 
know in Hawaii, and in our coastal communities.
  The science has come a long way in the past 50 years and Alaska has 
too. As we mark this historic anniversary, we remember those who 
perished in the Good Friday Earthquake.
  We salute the men and women who help protect our safety by monitoring 
and researching earthquakes and tsunamis, both in our State and in 
others. We thank the first responders who helped Alaskans in 1964, just 
as we thank those who are helping with the recovery in Washington 
today. Let us also use this occasion to consider whether we ourselves 
are prepared for the worst should we ever face a similar day of 
reckoning in the future.
  To recognize this historic event, I have submitted a Senate 
resolution that commemorates the Great Alaska Earthquake. My colleague 
from Alaska, Senator Begich, and my colleagues from Oregon, California, 
and Hawaii have joined me.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From Anchorage Daily News, Mar. 24, 2014]

 Tsunamis: Warning Systems Improved Since Great Alaska Earthquake but 
                            Unlikely To Help

                            (By Mike Dunham)

       NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center puts the total 
     number of deaths resulting from the Great Alaska Earthquake 
     of 1964 at 139. Fifteen of those deaths are attributed to 
     falling buildings or crumbling ground during the quake 
     itself.
       The rest were killed by water.
       Thirty-two people died when a wave 30 feet high boiled up 
     in Port Valdez. Similar sized waves took 12 lives in Seward 
     and 15 in Kodiak and its surrounding villages. Another dozen 
     perished when a wall of water 40 feet high smashed into 
     Whittier. In the Prince William Sound village of Chenega, a 
     third of the population--23 people--was swept away by a 90-
     foot wave.
       Smaller numbers of casualties were reported in scattered 
     settlements across the region, from Cape St. Elias to Port 
     Nellie Juan. One death took place at Shoup Bay on Valdez Arm, 
     where the wave may have splashed 220 feet up the Chugach 
     mountains.
       In many places, the ground was still shaking as the water 
     hit.
       ``We have this picture in our heads that first an 
     earthquake happens, then the tsunami comes,'' said Mike West, 
     State Seismologist at the Alaska Earthquake Information 
     Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. ``But in 
     Alaska's fiords, something else happens.''
       In the second biggest earthquake ever recorded, that 
     ``something else'' was massive.
       ``The entire floor of Prince William Sound failed,'' said 
     Cindi Preller, Tsunami Program Manager for NOAA Alaska 
     Region. ``It was chaos.''


                              WAVE TRAINS

       There are different kinds of tsunamis and the 1964 
     earthquake set off a variety of them.
       One was a general global splashing generated by the 
     magnitude of the quake. The 1964 event was so strong that it 
     made the whole world ``ring like a bell,'' reads a U.S. 
     Geological Survey pamphlet. Vibrations shook the planet for 
     weeks and caused measurable sloshing as far away as Florida. 
     Shifts in water levels were recorded in 47 states, including 
     land-locked ones. Even in South Africa--about as far from 
     Alaska as one can get--fluctuations in well water were noted.
       One type of tsunami produced by the earthquake, seiche 
     waves, caused no casualties, but they were violent enough to 
     sink boats in Louisiana. Seiche action refers to standing 
     waves in enclosed or confined water. They can be caused in 
     different ways. Those caused by seismic disruptions can occur 
     in places with no direct connection to bodies of water near 
     the source of an earthquake.
       Tectonic tsunamis are created directly by the shock of a 
     fracture. They tend to come in a series of waves rather than 
     a single surge, like the ripples formed when you plunk a rock 
     into a calm pool and the displaced water spreads out in 
     rings.
       In the case of an undersea fracture, the displacement of 
     the water comes from below. University of Alaska Anchorage 
     geology professor Kristine Crossen said the sudden upthrust 
     at one spot of Prince William Sound was so large that it took 
     two minutes for the water to run off it.
       ``When the ocean bottom is moved, it sets up a wave 
     train,'' said Peter Haeussler, U.S. Geological Survey 
     research geologist.
       These trains can travel thousands of miles at speeds of 500 
     miles an hour. In the deep water of the open ocean they seem 
     small. But as they enter shallow water near shore, they grow 
     slower and taller.
       Current thinking is that, in 1964, tectonic waves were 
     generated from two areas in the massive rupture, said 
     Preller. One was near the epicenter, where the quake began, 
     in northern Prince William Sound. The other was near Kodiak, 
     hundreds of miles away. These waves took lives and leveled 
     buildings from Alaska to California, often in concert with 
     the most lethal kind of wave to emanate from the 1964 quake, 
     landslide tsunamis.
       These happen when the earthquake causes an avalanche. 
     That's what happened in Lituya Bay in Glacier Bay National 
     Park on July 9, 1958. Tumbling rock and ice sent up a 
     megatsunami 1,720 feet high, the largest wave recorded in 
     modern times.
       The steep, mile-high mountains we see above ground 
     throughout the southern coast of Alaska are mirrored by a 
     similar submarine geography, where slopes can be further 
     encumbered by millions of years of volcanic residue, glacial 
     silt and other muck. A strong shake can send incalculable 
     tons of material tumbling underwater, unseen and undetected 
     until the displaced ocean shoots into the air.
       ``Those are really devilish,'' West said. ``And they're not 
     currently predictable.''


                              SUDDEN DEATH

       Valdez was founded during the gold rush on glacial fill and 
     alluvial deposits surrounded by precipitous mountains. The 
     ground at the old townsite was flat and easy to build on and 
     ran right to the edge of a deep water port.
       When the earthquake began, the delta deposits liquified. A 
     mile of waterfront slumped into the bottom of the harbor, 
     pushing water toward the open sea.
       A home movie taken from the deck of the freighter Chena, 
     tied to the city dock at the time of the quake, shows the 
     400-foot ship sinking into a giant hole in the water, the 
     bottom of the harbor exposed. Then, with ferocious frothing, 
     the ocean crashes back.
       Those on the dock--citizens, curious children and workers--
     were killed in the first seconds of the quake. Amazingly, the 
     Chena rode out the surge that carried it into the town and 
     left it high and dry--temporarily. New waves hit, some after 
     midnight, and floated it out to sea again.
       ``We think Valdez had two landslipping events,'' said 
     Preller--one in Valdez Arm, the other right under the dock.
       Most Valdez businesses and half of the homes in town were 
     destroyed. Fuel tanks split open and their contents caught 
     fire, a catastrophe that would be repeated in the ports of 
     Whittier, Seward and Crescent City.
       The fiords and coves throughout Prince William Sound, the 
     area nearest where the quake began, experienced similar 
     underwater landslides causing waves estimated to have 
     splashed as much as 220 feet above sea level. Most of these 
     places had few if any residents.
       But there were people in Whittier and Seward. In those 
     towns, as in Valdez, the narrow harbors confined by steep 
     slopes channelized the water into a bore, amplifying the wave 
     action like a giant bathtub.
       Arriving immediately after the quake, or even while it was 
     still rumbling, they gave residents no warning and little 
     chance to escape. ``The first tsunamis hit two minutes after 
     the earthquake started,'' said Preller. The quake lasted for 
     4\1/2\ minutes.
       The island of Chenega, southwest of Valdez, is not a dead-
     end inlet, like Whittier. But it is surrounded by precipitous 
     submarine channels. ``Prince William Sound is an environment 
     where the inlets are extremely deep,'' said Preller. The 
     underwater valleys had much the same effect as the above-
     water fiords.
       The first wave rose smoothly but with astonishing speed, 
     catching people trying to outrun it, trapping others in their 
     homes. A second wave struck more violently, smashing every 
     structure in the village except for the school. A third 
     scattered whatever was left.
       Survivors huddled around a fire through the night with no 
     way to get word of their plight to the outside world.


                               EVACUATION

       Most people in Kodiak figured the big quake was shaking 
     only their neighborhood. The first inkling that it might be 
     more serious came when they noticed that long distance phone 
     service was out.
       In the village of Kaguyak on the south end of Kodiak 
     island, however, residents observed the odd swell on the 
     ocean. They began moving away from the shore and sent radio 
     warnings to nearby communities. Warnings picked up elsewhere 
     on the island, alerting the people of Kodiak city 20 minutes 
     before the first wave arrived.
       The city's fire trucks ran their sirens to warn the 
     population. Police went door to door urging evacuation and a 
     line of cars started driving up Pillar Mountain. The town's 
     taxi fleet used their CB radios to establish an ad hoc 
     communications network.

[[Page S1803]]

       The first surge came into Kodiak harbor at low tide, about 
     half an hour after the quake. It didn't reach much past the 
     docks and is thought to have been a landslide tsunami. ``It 
     came much sooner than we would have expected from a tectonic 
     tsunami,'' said Preller. Most of the affected towns 
     experienced both types of wave, she said.
       Thirty minutes later a second wave came into the city, 
     pushing boats into the city streets, floating cars away, 
     wrenching buildings from their foundations and causing walls 
     to collapse. It was not the towering breaker that swept up 
     the Chena in Valdez or wiped out a sawmill and its workers in 
     Whittier, but more on the lines of a large swell.
       ``Survivors most often describe tsunamis as a rapidly 
     rising tide,'' said Haeussler. ``They're like a continuous 
     rise of the ocean that never stops. Often you cannot outrun 
     it. It just overwhelms everything in its path.''
       At least three more waves ripped through the town in the 
     next few hours. It's presumed that the highest reached 26 
     feet above mean low tide level. But no one saw it. It came in 
     pitch dark after midnight when most of the population had 
     moved up the hill. Kodiak fatalities tended to come not from 
     people on land, but from those who were in fishing boats 
     caught in the surge.


                          LONG-DISTANCE KILLER

       Kodiak was luckier than Crescent City, Calif. Residents 
     there received a warning three hours after the Alaska quake 
     began. Many evacuated before the tectonic wave came in, just 
     before midnight. Half an hour later a second wave, lower than 
     the first, rolled into the harbor.
       ``People thought that was it,'' said Lori Dengler, a 
     professor of geology at Humboldt State University in Northern 
     California. ``They came back.''
       At 1:20 a.m., a wave swirled into the waterfront that broke 
     the tide gauge. The fourth wave is estimated to have reached 
     22 feet, Dengler said. ``It was terribly timed. It came just 
     at the top of the tide.''
       More than 100 homes were destroyed. Eleven people died. 
     Total damage was estimated at $23 million.
       Others died in the rising waters at Newport, Ore. and 
     Klamath River, Calif. $600,000 in damage was sustained by 
     boats and harbor facilities in San Raphael, Calif.
       In Hawaii, tsunamis from the Alaska earthquake caused about 
     $70,000 in damage. Waves in several places were as high as 
     the one that devastated Crescent City.
       But no lives were lost. When the tsunami warning sirens 
     went off, the Hawaiians paid heed. They had learned their 
     lesson from another Alaska earthquake 18 years before.
       On April 1, 1946, an Aleutian quake with a magnitude 
     perhaps as high as 8.1 set off a wave that wiped out the 
     concrete, five-story high Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak 
     Island. Hours later, Hawaiians flocked to the shores to 
     observe the peculiar super-low tide. Curious crowds gathered 
     on the beach at Hilo. Children ran to explore the exposed sea 
     bottom. By the time they saw the wave coming it was too late 
     to get away; 165 people died, including six in Alaska.
       As a result, a system of ocean-based alarms was established 
     to detect tsunami activity in areas particularly prone to 
     seismic shifts. A line of detectors follows the Alaska coast 
     where earthquake activity is particularly high.


                             EARLY WARNING

       The detectors do a good job of alerting populations far 
     from where the earthquakes take place, Dengler said. She 
     noted a tsunami that hit Crescent City following the 2011 
     Japan quake was within inches of what the data predicted.
       ``But near the source area, they're not helpful,'' she 
     said.
       That's because a landslide tsunami will get to shore before 
     the warning does, if there's any warning at all.
       ``We cannot detect when a landslide has happened,'' said 
     Preller. ``If you're near the ocean when there's an 
     earthquake, get to high ground and stay there. Don't wait for 
     a warning. The earthquake is your warning.''
       Nonetheless, Dengler said, the progress in long-distance 
     tsunami warning has come a long way since 1964. ``Back then 
     it took three hours after the quake for Crescent City to get 
     the warning. Today it would be two or three minutes.''
       Preller called the Japanese tsunami warning system ``the 
     best on the planet.'' That country has made some intriguing 
     progress in providing early warnings for earthquakes.
       ``From the moment an earthquake initiates, you usually have 
     some period of time before the shaking reaches you,'' said 
     West. ``If you can nail down that earthquake immediately when 
     it happens, there's the potential of providing several tens 
     of seconds of warning. That's enough time to shut down 
     transit systems or have a surgeon put down his scalpel.''
       West is impressed by Japan's combination of good 
     instrumentation and a warning notification system. ``It was 
     quite successful in the 2011 earthquake,'' he said. He sent a 
     link to a Youtube video that shows a computer screen just 
     before the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11 that 
     year. An automated voice is counting down from 29 seconds. At 
     the moment the countdown reaches zero, the rattling begins.
       ``California, Oregon and Washington are in the process of 
     developing such systems,'' West said. ``Gov. Jerry Brown has 
     mandated that California will do this.
       ``There's a legitimate discussion to be held as to whether 
     or not such an investment would be worth it here. But nothing 
     like it is currently in development for Alaska.''
     Wednesday: Witness to destruction
       Shortly after tsunamis destroyed much of Seward, school 
     students recorded their experiences with pictures.
     Tidal wave vs. tsunami
       In 1964 the phrase ``tidal wave'' was universally used by 
     both average Alaskans and experts quoted in the media to 
     describe the giant waves that wrought so much death and 
     damage. Today the preferred term for a wave generated by a 
     solid physical force such as an earthquake, landslide or 
     volcano is tsunami. Tidal waves refer to waves caused by 
     extreme tidal action or wind, including tidal bores or storm 
     surges.
     Casualties
       There are various numbers given for the number of deaths 
     caused by the Great Alaska Earthquake. The most recent 
     estimate is given by the National Geophysical Data Center as 
     139, 124 of which were due to tsunamis; however that database 
     does not break down the fatalities by location. ``The 
     casualties are still under discussion,'' said Cindi Preller, 
     Tsunami Program Manager, NOAA Alaska Region.
     Is Anchorage in danger?
       In theory, a tsunami is possible at any oceanside location. 
     But it's considered improbable in upper Cook Inlet. 
     ``Generally speaking, tsunamis travel better through deep 
     water,'' said Kristine Crossen, head of UAA's geology 
     department. ``Cook Inlet is fairly shallow. It creates a lot 
     of friction on the base of the wave.''

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed 
to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid 
upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolution (S. Res. 400) was agreed to.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  (The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record 
under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I thank you for the opportunity to speak again on this 
historic event to recognize those who lost lives, lost family, and 
those who helped to not only ensure that Alaska was able to regroup and 
regain but knowing we have used these lessons learned 50 years ago to 
help us going forward.

                          ____________________