But of course, I hadn’t come to Valdez just to gaze at the breathtaking views, eat cake, and chat with wonderful kids. This was a research trip.

  I’ve traveled to almost every place I’ve written about in the I Survived series. I’ve wandered the ancient streets of Pompeii, Italy. I’ve climbed the slopes of the volcano Mt. St. Helens. I’ve stood on Civil War battlefields in Gettysburg and climbed down a cliffside in Wellington, Washington, in search of 100-year-old train wreckage. These trips are an important part of my bringing the I Survived books to life. I had come to Alaska to learn more about what happened during and after the 1964 earthquake.

  That disaster — a 9.2 earthquake that lasted nearly five minutes — caused destruction and suffering in many areas of Alaska and as far away as California. But early on in my research, I knew I wanted to focus on Valdez. The small city (very small — just 650 people lived there at the time of the earthquake) has a fascinating history.

  Native Alaskans — Ahtna Athabascan, Sugpiaq, and Eyak — hunted and fished in the areas around Valdez for thousands of years.

  More than 700,000 Alaska Native people live in Alaska today. Many still practice their unique traditions. These Athabascan girls are wearing kuspuks — overshirts with large pockets on the front.

  In the late 1800s, gold was discovered in Alaska, and tens of thousands of people from the United States and Canada rushed to the state. Many arrived by ship in Valdez and then set out to find their fortunes.

  Few found even a speck of gold. Many froze, starved, drowned, or fell to their deaths on grueling months-long journeys across harsh land, glaciers, and rushing rivers. Exhausted, broke, and frostbit, most left Alaska, vowing never to return.

  But some stayed in Valdez, living in tents at first. As time went on, they built houses and schools and churches. They opened shops and restaurants and other businesses. Valdez grew over the years. By the 1960s, it had become known as a beautiful, vibrant town.

  The first people to live permanently in Valdez arrived during the Gold Rush of 1898.

  But a deadly danger lurked in Valdez. The ground under the houses and businesses wasn’t solid land. It was made up of tiny bits of smashed-up rock, packed tightly together. Nobody knew this … until March 27, 1964, when the earthquake struck.

  The shaking from the earthquake caused that ground-up rock to turn to mush. That’s why the waterfront crumbled into the sea just seconds after the earthquake began. Thirty-two people died in Valdez, more than in any other part of Alaska. Almost all of those who died were standing on the docks.

  Small tsunamis flooded the town after the quake. Later that night, big oil tanks exploded, causing fires that burned for days. Amazingly, few houses and buildings in the town were destroyed in the disaster. And at first it seemed the town could quickly recover.

  But geologists — scientists who study the earth — recognized that the unstable ground wasn’t just near the waterfront. Much of Valdez sat on land that could crumble away if there was another earthquake, even a less powerful one. This is why town leaders made the difficult decision to move the town four miles away, to a spot where the ground was more solid. Within three years, a new Valdez was born.

  I learned all about this in the books and articles I read. But I wanted to see it all for myself. I wanted to talk to experts and meet people who survived the quake. And I was in luck. Valdez has an incredible museum — the Valdez Museum and Historical Archive. Two historians there — Faith Revell and Caron Oberg — generously offered to be my guides and to connect me to earthquake survivors still living in the town.

  Within ten minutes of arriving in Valdez, I was talking to Tom Gilson, who was thirteen years old when the disaster struck. A fit and friendly retired banker, Tom was born in Valdez and has spent most of his life here. When the earthquake started, Tom was just two blocks from the waterfront. He watched as the Chena rose and fell in the churning waters, and as the docks crumbled into the sea. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about that day,” he told me.

  Tom Gilson the year before the earthquake

  My meeting with Tom took place inside a building owned by the Valdez Museum. The former warehouse is filled with objects from Valdez’s history. Most spectacular is an enormous model of “old Valdez” — the town as it stood in its original location, before the earthquake. Spread across six glass-topped tables, the model includes miniature versions of every single house and building. “For people who grew up in old Valdez, this is where we come to talk about our history. Because this is all we’ve got left of our old town.”

  Tom Gilson stands at one of the glass-covered tables containing the scale model of the original town of Valdez. He pointed out his family’s house and explained that like many buildings in old Valdez, his house was moved to the new town site and still stands. His brother still lives there now. Tom and his wife raised their family in the house next door.

  The next day we met Dorothy Moore, who was a nineteen year-old college student when the earthquake struck. A retired teacher and self-taught earthquake expert, Dorothy’s eyes sparkled from behind colorful glasses as she welcomed David and me into her home.

  Dorothy Moore in high school

  We sat in a room filled with books about Alaska history, with paintings of birds and mountains hanging from the walls. Dorothy shared her earthquake experience; she was at home from college when the earthquake struck. The family was sitting down to a spaghetti dinner when the house started to shake violently.

  Like most Alaskans, she’d experienced earthquakes before. “But never anything like this,” she said. The shaking got stronger … and didn’t stop. “Most earthquakes last for less than a minute. This one lasted five. I never thought it would end.”

  As we sat together, Dorothy didn’t dwell on the day of the disaster. A lifelong teacher, she was eager to share her knowledge of earthquake science and disaster preparedness. She gave me files filled with scientific articles, maps, and lesson plans.

  She explained more about the town’s new location. It’s definitely safer than old Valdez, she told me. But earthquakes and tsunamis are still a big risk here (and everywhere in Alaska). So it’s important to be prepared. She keeps her house stocked with candles and other emergency supplies. She knows how to reach high ground in case an earthquake triggers a tsunami.

  Dorothy’s home is like a museum, packed with books, articles, and other materials about Alaska history and the earthquake. She explained that Valdez is still prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, but its new location is far safer than the first.

  “You don’t have to be scared,” Dorothy said. “But you can know how to stay safe.”

  David and I spent four wonderful days in Valdez. A highlight was when Faith and Caron, the historians from the Valdez Museum, drove us to the site of old Valdez. There’s almost nothing left — some rotten wood stumps that were once part of a pier, a rusted forklift, a concrete slab where the post office once stood.

  A few days later, David and I returned on our own. I walked to the edge of the water. It looked beautiful and peaceful. Birdsong echoed through the air. But I felt a deep ache in my chest as I thought about what happened here. The terror of those five minutes. The people who were lost. The sorrow of those left behind.

  During our trip to the waterfront of old Valdez, Faith (right) shared fascinating details about the town’s history and the events of the earthquake.

  But as I turned away from the water, I thought of Tom Gilson and Dorothy Moore. Both have spent most of their lives in Valdez. They’re proud of the town’s history, and they love living there.

  Like so many places I have visited to research I Survived books, the waterfront in old Valdez is a beautiful place, haunted by tragedy.

  Tom and Dorothy reminded me of other people I’ve met on other I Survived trips. Tornado survivors from Joplin, Missouri. Hurricane survivors from New Orleans, Louisiana. Fire survivors from Paradise, California. Holocaust survivors from World War II.

  I’ve learned so much from these people, who have generously shared their stories and insights with me. Their most important lessons are not about history or natural disasters but about how we can move forward after experiencing even unimaginable losses. We don’t forget the past. Our losses leave scars. But with the help of our families and friends, we can rebuild our towns — and our lives — on solid ground.

  THE 1964 ALASKA EARTHQUAKE WAS THE MOST POWERFUL EVER RECORDED IN UNITED STATES HISTORY

  The quake had a magnitude of 9.2. That makes it the strongest ever measured in North America and the second most powerful in the world. The strongest happened just a few years before, off the coast of Chile.

  Not only was the Alaska earthquake shockingly strong, it lasted a very long time — almost five minutes. History’s most famous US earthquake, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, lasted 60 seconds. As I was researching this book, I kept trying to imagine more than four minutes of shaking, roaring … screaming. To those who survived, those five minutes must have felt like forever.

  The earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska, under Prince William Sound, a 2,500-square-mile area of ocean along Alaska’s south-central coast. Shock waves exploded in every direction. The most violent shaking was felt in Anchorage, Valdez, Seward, and other areas along the south-central coast of the state. Twelve hundred miles away, the famous building called the Space Needle swayed in Seattle. Fishermen in Louisiana even noticed strange ripples in lakes and rivers.

  In some areas of Alaska, the ground shattered apart. In this Anchorage neighborhood, houses also slid into the sea.

  Alaska’s biggest city, Anchorage, was severely damaged in the earthquake. On this downtown street, parts of the ground dropped eleven feet.

  Fissures like this one split the ground throughout Alaska’s southern coast.

  THE ALASKA EARTHQUAKE WAS FOLLOWED BY TSUNAMIS

  In the minutes following the Alaska earthquake, tsunami (tsoo-NAH-mee) waves smashed into cities and towns along parts of Alaska’s coastline. These waves caused tremendous destruction and more deaths than the actual earthquake.

  The first tsunamis to hit were caused by underwater landslides and “slumps” — areas where the land at the edge of a waterfront slid into the sea from the shaking. This is what happened in Valdez.

  The tsunami in Valdez was just a few feet high. But others were massive. One wave, more than seventy feet tall, swallowed the small village of Chenega, killing twenty-six out of the seventy-five people living there.

  Other tsunamis began farther out in the ocean in the Gulf of Alaska. Over the six hours following the quake, waves sped out in many directions. Some hit along the coast of Alaska. Others raced down the west coast of the United States at more than four hundred miles per hour — faster than some jets. Four people died when waves crashed ashore in Oregon. An hour later, twelve people drowned in waves that hit Crescent City, California. Waves reached as far as Hawaii and Japan, thousands of miles away from where they began.

  Tsunami damage in the town of Kodiak, Alaska

  131 PEOPLE DIED IN THE ALASKA EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI

  This loss of life was tragic. But far fewer people died in the Alaska earthquake than in other recent powerful earthquakes and tsunamis. This is because Alaska was (and still is) mostly wilderness.

  The state of Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas. But in 1964, only about 250,000 people lived in the entire state. Today, approximately 733,000 people live in Alaska. But still, less than 1 percent of the land is occupied by humans. Millions of acres are set aside for wildlife.

  Had a similar earthquake and tsunami struck a more crowded and built-up area, the death toll would have been far higher. For example, the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011 devastated parts of Japan. That disaster killed about 18,000 people.

  Damage in Otsochi, Japan, following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami

  EARTHQUAKES WERE ONCE A MYSTERY

  Nearly two thousand years ago, when the volcano Vesuvius erupted near Naples, Italy, most people believed the explosive terror was the work of furious gods or goddesses or a massive beast waking up inside the mountain.

  That’s not because those people were foolish. Back then, scientists had not yet begun to understand the forces that create volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.

  Slowly, over the centuries, Earth scientists — known as geologists — began to more fully understand our fascinating planet so that people no longer blamed goddesses or monsters for disasters.

  In the 1910s and 1920s, scientists began to make important breakthroughs in earthquake science. This is when geologists first came up with a theory known as plate tectonics. To understand it, first picture our big, beautiful planet Earth floating in space. But Earth is not just a gigantic ball of solid rock covered with oceans and land. Our planet is made up of four main layers — the crust, the mantle, and the outer and inner cores.

  The crust, the outer part, is made of rock, and it’s what you are sitting on top of right now. The crust is between about four and about forty miles thick, and is covered with oceans, mountains, and our cities and towns. It is broken up into seventeen giant slabs (called plates) that fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

  You can think of Earth’s crust like a cracked, crunchy chocolate coating wrapped around a ball of gooey caramel. The places where the plates meet (imagine the cracks in the chocolate) are called plate boundaries. The crust sits on top of Earth’s mantle, an even thicker layer of molten rock (the caramel!).

  What does this have to do with earthquakes?

  According to the theory of plate tectonics, the plates of the crust are always moving — a few inches a year. And sometimes, the rough edges of two different plates get “stuck” on each other. The plates push and grind against each other as they try to keep moving. Sometimes the pressure becomes so strong that one of the plates slips violently past, over, or under the other. Or they suddenly snap back to their original positions. These kinds of sharp movements release energy that sends shock waves up to the surface of the planet — earthquakes.

  The map above is a world map that also shows all the different plates. These plates are outlined in black, and they each have names. Very large earthquakes almost always happen at plate boundaries — the places where the plates meet. The circle on this map shows where the 1964 Alaska earthquake happened. Earthquakes can also happen in cracks in the plates. The places where earthquakes happen — both plate boundaries and other cracks in the plates — are known as “faults.”

  SCIENTISTS LEARNED FROM THE ALASKA EARTHQUAKE

  Not all geologists agreed with the theory of plate tectonics at first. But that would change in the months after the Alaska earthquake.

  The US government sent a geologist named George Plafker to Alaska. He and other scientists spent months walking across the shattered land.

  They measured fissures. They discovered places where the quake had caused flat land to rise by nearly 40 feet. In other places, the land dropped down. Entire forests had been killed by seawater.

  Most intriguing to Plafker, rocks along the shoreline were covered with barnacles. Those are tiny sea creatures that cling to rocks and other surfaces underwater. But these barnacles were all dead.

  Plafker realized this was a sign that the earthquake had caused the seafloor to rise up so that the barnacles were no longer covered with water. This caused the tiny creatures to dry up.

  In this photo from 2013, George Plafker shows a picture of the Alaskan shoreline after the quake. The white stripe on the rocks is dried-up barnacles, proving that the sea floor rose up during the earthquake.

  Like detectives solving a mystery, the scientists put together their clues. Their work helped prove the theory of plate tectonics. They made new discoveries about where the biggest earthquakes are likely to happen — and ideas for making us safer. We can’t prevent Earth from shaking under our feet, but we can try to be prepared.

  Today, buildings in earthquake-prone areas like Alaska and California have laws to make sure buildings and bridges are constructed to withstand earthquakes. Kids at school go through earthquake drills so they know how to stay safe.

  Third graders take cover under their desks during an earthquake drill in California.

  The Alaska earthquake of 1964 may not be the most famous earthquake. (It was an I Survived reader named Nathan who suggested the topic to me! Thank you, Nathan!) But to geologists, what was learned from the Alaska earthquake makes it one of the most important in history.

  SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD, AN EARTHQUAKE IS PROBABLY HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

  Hundreds of earthquakes happen every single day. Most are so mild that even people living right near them don’t feel anything. But every year, between six and twenty of those earthquakes are strong enough to cause serious damage. And every few years there is an earthquake somewhere that causes enormous destruction.

  Some places are more prone to earthquakes than others. Many of history’s most destructive quakes have happened in areas that border the Pacific Ocean. This horseshoe-shaped region is known as the Ring of Fire. There are more active volcanoes (over 450!) here than anywhere in the world. And several big tectonic plates come together in the area, which is why so many earthquakes — 90 percent of all earthquakes on Earth — happen somewhere along the Ring of Fire.

  In the United States, Alaska gets more earthquakes than any other state. California comes in second. Washington and Oregon are also in the top ten. No surprise, all these states are on the Ring of Fire.