Biggest Earthquake in US History. He Stayed on the Radio for 70 Hours.

On Good Friday, 1964, the biggest earthquake in US history hit Alaska. In Valdez, Alaska, the waterfront slid into the bay, the power went out, and the phones went dead.

Within half an hour, a ham radio operator named Thomas Lawrence, KL7EPL, was on the air calling Anchorage for help. But Anchorage was in trouble too…so who was going to hear him?

When his family left town with the other women and children, he didn’t go with them. He was the only ham left on the air in Valdez, and he couldn’t keep that up forever.

This story of the 1964 Alaska earthquake comes from the July 1964 issue of QST, the 1964 callbook, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s report on Valdez. The full list is below.

If you know a story about somebody with a radio who did something worth telling, put it in the comments. Some of the best ones never made it into any magazine.

CHAPTERS
00:00 “Everything is coming apart”
00:52 Valdez, Alaska, 1964
01:34 The Good Friday earthquake hits
02:14 The tsunami and the Chena
03:13 A town cut off
03:51 Thomas Lawrence, KL7EPL
04:36 The ham who heard him
05:07 He stayed
05:58 70,000 messages
06:36 Relief from Fairbanks
07:26 What’s left of old Valdez

SOURCES
George Hart, W1NJM, “The Alaska Story,” QST, July 1964, pp. 46-53 (ARRL)

Bil Paul, KD6JUI, “Honoring Ham Radio’s Response to the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake,” QST, July 2021, p. 20

Radio Amateur Callbook, Fall 1964
https://archive.org/details/Fall_1964_Radio_Amateur_Callbook

H.W. Coulter and R.R. Migliaccio, “Effects of the Earthquake of March 27, 1964, at Valdez, Alaska,” U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 542-C (1966)
https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/pp542C

UAF Geophysical Institute, “When Valdez Moved”
https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/when-valdez-moved-good-friday-earthquake

Valdez Museum & Historical Archive, “Standard Oil Tank Farm”
https://www.valdezmuseum.org/standard-oil-tank-farm/

Visit Valdez, “1964 Good Friday Earthquake”
https://www.valdezalaska.org/discover/history/1964-good-friday-earthquake/

Anchorage Memories, “Big Alaska Earthquake: A Valdez Girl’s Story”
https://www.anchoragememories.com/big-alaska-earthquake.html

IMAGE CREDITS
“Valdez, Alaska 1966” by Dwight Sipler, CC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Archival photographs courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA, and the National Archives (public domain).

Archival film from the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Office of Civil Defense (public domain).

Additional footage licensed via Envato Elements.