Crescent City’s ’64 tsunami - February 3, 2005

Crescent City’s ’64 tsunami - February 3, 2005: "Four-and-a-half hours later, the tsunami reached 2,000 miles south to tiny Crescent City — it would be hardest hit. It created scenes that looked on a small scale much like those of the December tsunami in the East Indian Ocean. Sleeping residents found themselves awash in monstrous waves, tossed like corks under the light of a full moon.

'Everything that happened on a larger scale in the East Indian Ocean,' Powers says. 'From the water to the way some buildings deflected it, the surge over shallow areas, the short- term problems of food and water and sewage — no electricity, no transportation, no banking, no nothing.'

Today’s tsunami warning system did not exist. Late that night a few reports had trickled down from Alaska and Washington, but the waves moved about as fast as the news. Most townspeople were home in bed. Others were partying in taverns. One woman in Crescent City heard about the tsunami when she talked on the phone to her husband, who was in Medford, and he said he’d heard something about a tidal wave on a Medford radio station."