New Girl Observation No. 7: What earthquake?

I’ll tell you this much—life does not stop in Anchorage for a mere 5.4 earthquake , as was felt this morning at 11:30 a.m.

In fact, it barely ranks top-of-the-fold news on the front of the Anchorage Daily News, as evidenced by its placement under three stories describing a dad’s ordeal adrift in the Pacific Ocean for 52 hours, swine flu in Alaska and the closure of a popular creek to protect a King salmon run.

The New Girl was at a staff meeting at work where discussions continued while the building swayed gently and the ground rumbled like a freight train was rolling by. “This building is on rollers,” a work friend whispered, as the gyrations continued and someone else commented that they felt a bit seasick. The quaking kept going for few minutes and was quickly forgotten as we got back into our talks. By the time my mom left a message on my voicemail a couple hours later, I had already forgotten about the earthquake.

This casual attitude about the earth shifting beneath our feet isn’t surprising in Alaska, which experienced one of the largest earthquakes in modern times on March 27, 1964. Here’s a quick video about the 110 died in the tsunamis—the largest of which was recorded in Valdez Inlet with a height of 67 meters. Many Alaskan coastal communities like Seward and Valdez were devastated by the tsunamis and have not forgotten it. I recently visited the Seward Library, which just secured grant funding to produce an updated movie about the impact of big earthquake on that seaside town.

Since coming to Alaska, I’ve meet many people who remember March 27, 1964 in great detail, just as they remember the day President Kennedy was killed and where they were on September 11. In Alaska, the earthquake left its mark on a generation and they vividly tell stories of cleaning up debris and rebuilding entire communities for months and years afterward.

Thankfully, there is no debris to clean up today in Anchorage. At the New Girl’s house, not a single vase was knocked over. But it’s a healthy reminder of what’s happened before and what can happen again in my new hometown.