About this episode

The episode discusses the record-breaking megatsunami that occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958, triggered by a massive earthquake.

On July 9th, 1958, a massive wall of water roared through Lituya Bay in Alaska, reaching the mind-boggling height of 1,720 feet up the mountainside. This remains the tallest tsunami wave ever recorded in modern history, and it was triggered by one of the most dramatic geological events ever witnessed by human beings. The evening started quietly enough. Three fishing boats were anchored in the T-shaped fjord, their crews settling in for the night. But at 10:15 PM, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale violently shook the Fairweather Fault. The quake was powerful enough to be felt over 400 miles away in Seattle, but the real drama was just beginning in that remote Alaskan inlet. The earthquake caused approximately 40 million cubic yards of rock and ice to break loose from the northeast wall of the bay, plunging 3,000 feet down into the water below. To put that in perspective, that's roughly equivalent to dropping 30 million mid-sized cars into the ocean all at once. The impact was so tremendous that it created what scientists call a megatsunami. The displaced water shot up the opposite slope to that incredible height of 1,720 feet, stripping away every tree, every bit of…

Topics covered

• tsunami
• earthquake
• geology
• natural disasters
• Alaska history

Keywords

• megatsunami
• Lituya Bay
• earthquake
• Alaska
• natural disaster
• tsunami height
• geological events

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Empire State Building

Places: Alaska, Lituya Bay, Seattle

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