It’s very difficult to sit at the news desk, hundreds of mile away and witness at a distance, events that effect friends and former neighbors in a place that is all too familiar to me. I don’t keep my love for all things Del Norte County, California, a secret — preferring instead to wear my upbringing like a heart on my sleeve.
To that end, and wishing to somehow emulate the late George Merriman, who spent much of his journalistic life writing of the county on a first-hand basis, I’ve pulled together as much information as I could on the recent tsunami to strike the coast of Del Norte. All I can do is imagine — for I’m feeling disconnected from the land and sea that I love as much as I do the high desert in which I now live.
Fishermen who had purposely put-out to sea before a tsunami hit Crescent City’s harbor, landed small loads of crab as the curious came to survey the damage and cleanup crews readied their gear. And while those cleanup crews assembled, divers could not go into the water and work boats could not maneuver until the surges were completely done.
The damage came as a series of powerful surges pounded the harbor throughout the day and into the night. Those waves funneled into the harbor, creating fast-moving currents that shattered docks, wrested boats from their moorings and brought possible ruin to an already struggling economy.
And as gawker’s looked on and fishermen plied their trade, California’s Governor Jerry Brown issued a state of emergency for Del Norte, Humboldt, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties due to the tsunami. State officials conferring with the U.S. Coast Guard say the damage is estimated to be at least $50 million along the entire coast of California.
About 80 percent of Crescent City’s docks once sheltering 140 boats, are gone. At least eight vessels sunk, and one damaged while an unmanned sailboat sucked out of the harbor ran aground, first on the north jetty, then later further down the coast.
University of Nevada-Reno seismologists say the swells that swept into Crescent City were the highest to hit the U.S., at jus’ over eight-feet. Furthermore experts with the U.S. Geological Survey say the huge shake, caused by a shift in the tectonic plates deep underwater, has thrown the earth off its axis point by at least 10 centimeters, or 4 inches, shortening our days by about 1.26 millionths of a second.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency says it has upgraded the magnitude of the catastrophic earthquake to 9.0, up from an 8.8. However the U.S.G.S. measures the quake at magnitude 8.9, a number that has remained unchanged.
In 1964, a massive tsunami with waves estimated to be more than 20 feet in height, swept over Crescent City, taking with it 11 lives, the only people reported to have ever died directly due to a tsunami in the 48 continuous states. Unfortunately, history has a sad way of repeating itself.
Three people were swept out to sea while trying to take photos of the tsunami at the mouth of the Klamath River. Two were able to swim back to shore, however 25-year-old Dustin Weber, formerly of Bend, Oregon, remains missing and is presumed drown. Weber had jus’ moved to Klamath.
Meanwhile across the sea in Japan, the government has doubled the number of soldiers deployed in that country’s earthquake aid effort to 100,000 as it tries to help millions of survivors left without drinking water and electricity. One official says the death toll will likely exceed 10,000 in one state alone along the pulverized northeastern coast.
Finally, the threat of multiple meltdowns fuels a growing nuclear crisis in the earthquake and tsunami-devastated region in northeast Japan. A top official says one partial meltdown is probably already happening and operators are frantically trying to keep temperatures down at the power plant’s other units and prevent the disaster from growing even worse.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
Leave a comment