Page 8A
NATION/WORLD
East Oregonian
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Back-to-back earthquakes, 7.0 and 5.7, hit Alaska
By RACHEL D’ORO AND
DAN JOLING
Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska
— Back-to-back earthquakes
measuring 7.0 and 5.7 shat-
tered highways and rocked
buildings Friday in Anchor-
age and the surrounding
area, sending people running
into the streets and briefly
triggering a tsunami warning
for islands and coastal areas
south of the city.
No tsunami arrived and
there were no immediate
reports of deaths or serious
injuries.
The U.S. Geological Sur-
vey said the first and more
powerful quake was cen-
tered about 7 miles north of
Anchorage, Alaska’s larg-
est city, with a population of
about 300,000. People ran
from their offices or took
cover under desks. The 5.7
aftershock arrived within
minutes, followed by a series
of smaller quakes.
“We just hung onto each
other. You couldn’t even
stand,” said Sheila Bailey,
who was working at a high
school cafeteria in Palmer
when the quake struck. “It
sounded and felt like the
school was breaking apart.”
A large section of an off-
ramp near the Anchorage
airport collapsed, maroon-
ing a car on a narrow island
of pavement surrounded
by deep chasms in the con-
crete. Several cars crashed
at a major intersection in
Wasilla, north of Anchorage,
during the shaking.
Anchorage Police Chief
Justin Doll said he had been
told that parts of Glenn High-
way, a scenic route that runs
northeast out of the city past
farms, mountains and gla-
ciers, had “completely disap-
peared.” Traffic in the three
lanes heading out of the city
was bumper-to-bumper and
all but stopped Friday after-
noon as emergency vehicles
passed on the shoulder.
The quake broke store
windows, knocked items off
shelves, opened cracks in a
two-story building down-
town, disrupted electrical
service and disabled traffic
lights, snarling traffic. It also
threw a full-grown man out
of his bathtub.
Flights at the airport were
suspended for hours after
the quake knocked out tele-
phones and forced the evac-
uation of the control tower.
And the 800-mile Alaska
oil pipeline was shut down
while crews were sent to
inspect it for damage.
Anchorage’s school sys-
tem canceled classes and
asked parents to pick up
their children while it exam-
ined buildings for gas leaks
or other damage.
Fifteen-year-old
Sadie
Blake and other members
AP Photo/Mike Dinneen
A tow truck holds a car that was pulled from an off-ramp that collapsed during a
morning earthquake on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska. The driver was not injured at-
tempting to exit Minnesota Drive at International Airport Road.
of the Homer High School
wrestling team were at an
Anchorage school gym-
nasium waiting for a tour-
nament to start when the
bleachers started rocking
“like crazy” and the lights
went out. People started run-
ning down the bleachers in
the dark, trying to get out.
“It was a gym full of
screams,” said team chaper-
one Ginny Grimes.
When it was over, Sadie
said, there was only one
thing she could do: “I
started crying.”
Jonathan Lettow was
waiting with his 5-year-old
daughter and other children
for a school bus near their
home in Wasilla when the
quake struck. The children
got on the ground while Let-
tow tried to keep them calm.
“It’s one of those things
where in your head, you
think, ‘OK, it’s going to
stop,’ and you say that to
yourself so many times in
your head that finally you
think, ‘OK, maybe this isn’t
going to stop,’” he said.
Soon after the shaking
ended, the school bus pulled
up and the children boarded,
but the driver stopped at
a bridge and refused to
go across because of deep
cracks in the road, Lettow
said.
Former Alaska Gov.
Sarah Palin tweeted that her
home was damaged: “Our
family is intact — house is
not. I imagine that’s the case
for many, many others.” She
posted a video of the inside
of her parents’ home, with
broken dishes littering the
kitchen floor. A large set
of antlers appeared to have
fallen off a wall of the living
room.
Gov. Bill Walker issued
a disaster declaration. He
was in an elevator in a high-
rise Anchorage office build-
ing and said it was a “rough
ride” coming down. He
described the quake as a 7.2,
though it was unclear why
his figure differed from that
of the USGS.
In Kenai, southwest of
Anchorage, Brandon Slaton
was home alone and soak-
ing in his bathtub when the
earthquake struck. Slaton,
who weighs 209 pounds,
said it created a powerful
back-and-forth sloshing that
threw him out of the tub.
His 120-pound mas-
tiff panicked and tried to
run down the stairs, but the
house was swaying so much
that the dog was thrown into
a wall and tumbled down the
stairs, Slaton said.
Slaton ran into his son’s
room after the shaking
stopped. The boy’s fish was
on the floor, gasping, its tank
shattered. Slaton put the fish
in a bowl.
“It was anarchy,” he said.
“There’s no pictures left on
the walls, there’s no power,
there’s no fish tank left.
Everything that’s not tied
down is broke.”
Tariff tensions shadow U.S., Canada, Mexico trade pact signing
By ZEKE MILLER AND
CATHERINE LUCEY
Associated Press
BUENOS
AIRES,
Argentina — President Don-
ald Trump signed a revised
North American trade pact
with the leaders of Can-
ada and Mexico on Friday,
declaring the deal a major
victory for workers. But
tensions over tariffs, loom-
ing GM layoffs and ques-
tions about the pact’s pros-
pects in Congress clouded
the celebratory moment.
The U.S.-Mexico-Can-
ada Agreement is meant
to replace the 24-year-
old North American Free
Trade Agreement, which
Trump has long denigrated
as a “disaster.” The lead-
ers signed the new deal on
the sidelines of the Group
of 20 summit in Buenos
Aires after two years of fre-
quently blistering negotia-
tions. Each country’s legis-
lature still must approve.
“This has been a bat-
tle, and battles sometimes
make great friendships, so
it’s really terrific,” Trump
said, before lining up next
to Canadian Prime Minis-
ter Justin Trudeau and out-
going Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto to sign
AP Photo/Martin Mejia
President Donald Trump, center, shakes hands with
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Mexico’s
President Enrique Pena Nieto looks on after they
signed a new United States-Mexico-Canada Agree-
ment that is replacing the NAFTA trade deal, during a
ceremony at a hotel before the start of the G20 summit
in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Friday.
three copies of the deal —
Trump using a black marker
for his signature scrawl.
The signing came at the
beginning of a packed two
days of diplomacy for the
American president that will
conclude with high-stakes
talks Saturday with Chi-
nese President Xi Jinping
on ways to ease an escalat-
ing trade war between the
two countries.
“There’s some good
signs,” Trump said. “We’ll
see what happens.”
For the new North Amer-
ican trade deal, legislative
approval is the next step.
That could prove a difficult
task in the United States,
especially now that Demo-
crats — instead of Trump’s
Republicans — will control
the House come January.
Democrats and their allies
in the labor movement are
already demanding changes.
Within hours of the sign-
ing, Senate Democratic
Leader Chuck Schumer said
the deal must have stron-
ger labor and environmen-
tal protections in order to
get majority support in
Congress and “must prove
to be a net benefit to mid-
dle-class families and work-
ing people.”
Democratic
House
Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi — who is seeking to
become House speaker in
the new year — quipped,
“The trade agreement for-
merly known as Prince —
no, I mean, formerly known
as NAFTA, is a work in
progress.”
Still, Trump projected
confidence, saying: “It’s
been so well reviewed I
don’t expect to have very
much of a problem.”
Trump is describing
USMCA as a landmark
trade agreement. But most
companies are just relieved
that it largely preserves the
status quo established by
NAFTA: a regional trade
bloc that allows most prod-
ucts to travel between the
United States, Canada and
Mexico duty free. During
the negotiations, Trump
repeatedly threatened to
pull out, a move that would
have disrupted businesses
that have built complicated
supply chains that strad-
dle the borders of the three
countries.
The new agreement does
make some changes to the
way business is done in
North America. It updates
the trade pact to reflect the
rise of the digital economy
since the original NAFTA
took effect nearly a quar-
ter century ago. It also gives
U.S. dairy farmers a bit
more access to the protected
Canadian market.
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