Shakin' Our Groove Thing

We've been channeling some classic music here in Alaska recently.  I'm sure almost everyone has heard about the 7.0 earthquake that hit Anchorage last Friday.  I doubt many have heard about the 1800 aftershocks (as of 9:00pm Mon) they've had since.  I didn't actually count, but running through the list, I think I saw about a dozen 5 pointers and at least 2 dozen 4 pointers.  The irony of the entire event was I planned on going home after school on Friday to blog about a 5.7 we had about 70 miles away from the village last week.  Obviously, that earthquake got one-upped before I could write that blog.  Mike and I didn't feel the Anchorage earthquake, but several in the village did (FYI Anchorage is about the same distance from us as St. Louis from Doniphan).  What really kind of puts this earthquake in perspective is that Mike had time for someone to come to my room where we were chatting before school, ask if we felt it and tell us about it, then Mike went upstairs to his office and called district office about 100 miles away where they were still shaking from the earthquake.

At our distance, we had no real damage (maybe a few new little cracks etc) from the earthquake, but an earthquake anywhere in Alaska always has the potential for serious damage here because of tsunamis.  Our tsunami warning system alerted immediately so we got to evacuate the school to our designated safe place on the upper road in the village at the base of the mountain.  Of course, we had snow and ice on the road from recent weather and it was raining as we were climbing up so it was extra slick.  The tsunami warning goes off automatically for major earthquakes, but I'm not sure what the cut-off range is - they didn't alert for the 5.7 last week.  They also have a buoy system in place to measure waves to detect tsunamis for warning purposes and help gauge the size, location, and timing of any tsunamis.  Then the Coast Guard also flies around to monitor the waves.  Using that information, they were able to cancel our warning early, so we only had to stand outside on the side of the mountain, with no shelter for two hours instead of three.

To add to the fun, we had every dog in the village with us.  Some were friendly, but others wanted to fight with each other making it a bit dangerous for our kiddos.  Then the siren went off every 12 minutes and I swear it lasted the entire 12 minutes so that there was no break - at least that's how it felt.  My kitty was not happy about any part of the whole situation.  The siren already had her stressed out, then her terrible mother had to scoop her out of her safe and cozy dresser drawer to shove her into a carrier and take her for a ride up the side of the mountain too.  Needless to say, I was in the doghouse.  When I brought her back home, I gave her some salmon and all has been forgiven.

I stole this picture from https://earthquake.alaska.edu/earthquakes .  It shows the earthquake activity in Alaska over the past couple weeks.  If you go to the website, it also has a listing from the most recent. I don't really have a way to mark our location on the picture, but we're in the middle of that blog.