Elleda Wilson: Tsunami scare
Mar. 21—On March 27, 1964, a tsunami hit Cannon Beach, caused by a 9.2 earthquake off Anchorage, Alaska. A post in the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum's blog notes that waves as high as 27 feet hit the Pacific Northwest coast that day.
Bill Steidel was playing poker with some pals at Frank Hammond's house. A phone call informed them that a tidal wave was coming, but they didn't believe it. "Then (Frank) got another phone call, and ... (he) put on his coat and headed for the door," Steidel recalled. "We said, 'Where are you going?' He says, 'The last wave broke over, you know, that tree in my driveway ...'" The tree was 30 feet tall.
The group all "hit the door at the same time," Steidel recalled, "and it was just like a Laurel and Hardy picture." The scramble continued trying to get out of the parking lot. "It was a hell of a mess," he said.
"... There was a house down on the creek ... and there was a little duplex, and the duplex started to move ... and it hit the telephone pole, and went around the telephone pole, and it ended way back up in the pasture," Margaret Sroufe remembered. "And the bridge lifted up and moved on back into the pasture. It came right up to the edge of our driveway."
"The bridge was gone," Steidel said, describing his journey home. "My family was on the other side ... There was water all around me, and then a house went by (and) went over into the meadow and settled down, looked like someone had built it there ... Somebody said all it moved was a coffee pot about a foot on the counter." He made it home via a logging road.
The tsunami flooded sections of the town, and left debris behind, but there were no casualties in Cannon Beach that day. (Photo: Cannon Beach History Center and Museum)
