February 24, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 5A
Looking back on the Tsunami of 1964
I
COURTESY CANNON BEACH HISTORY CENTER AND MUSEUM
Evacuation in Cannon Beach in 1964.
REFLECTIONS
ELAINE TRUCKE
they called it then, might hit
Washington and California,”
Haskell said. “They didn’t
mention Oregon, so I didn’t
pay a whole lot of attention
until I looked out the window
and saw a wave breaking over
the bulkhead. … It splashed
up over the edge and I thought
that was awfully high tide with
no storm.”
Margaret Sroufe and her
husband had an up close and
personal view of the tidal
wave as it fl ushed up Ecola
Creek. Her house was on the
west side of Elm Street in the
north end of town.
“I was the civil defense
person for the north side of the
creek,” Sroufe said. “If there
was a problem, I was sup-
posed to notify the residents of
the area.”
She called the Seaside
police when she heard about
the wave on the news, but was
told that until the Coast Guard
recommended what needed to
be done, no alerts for evacu-
ation would be given, in case
of panic. Hearing this news,
Sroufe and her husband began
to get ready for bed.
“I went to turn the tele-
vision volume down, and I
looked out the window and I
saw all these green and blue
fl ashing lights. It was when
the bridge went out and broke
the power lines,” she said.
“And here came this water,
just up, not in like a wave, just
raising up. We went out on the
porch and watched the water
come up.”
LETTERS
County made the wrong
choice on lawsuit
Last month, Seaside and
Gearhart’s county commis-
sioner Sarah Nebeker cast
the deciding vote against
Clatsop County participating
in a class action lawsuit. The
lawsuit claims that the State
of Oregon did not live up to
its contractual obligation to
generate required revenue
from our forestland that
was given them to manage
by Clatsop County. Clatsop
County might have received
$262 million from the state
under this suit.
Over time the State, under
pressure from those through-
out the state who prefer
our forested lands remain
unharvested, has cut back
the original contractually
required plans to generate
revenue. This revenue is
needed to help operate Clat-
sop County schools and local
government.
The County Commission
by a 3-to-2 vote said that the
state is doing a good enough
job. Our county commis-
sioner evidently wants the
forest to be a state park with
a lesser need for our schools
and roads. In July, commis-
sioner Nebeker was enthu-
siastic about the county’s
plan for improving the Lewis
and Clark mainline road to
provide a disaster evacuation
route behind Gearhart and
Seaside. There is no funding
plan for this $15 million
project; just 5 percent of the
potential judgment would
meet the funding needs for
this life and death project.
Our area needs these types
of projects so it can survive
and continue to fl ourish in
the event of a disaster. The
County Commission needs to
enforce our contract. If they
don’t like the contract then
renegotiate it to get the state
to provide the revenue from
another source.
John Dunzer
Seaside
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Standing on her porch,
Sroufe had a unique view of
the main damage that would
be done to Cannon Beach
during the tsunami.
“There was a house down
on the creek and there was a
little duplex, and the duplex
started to move … It hit the
telephone pole, and went
around the telephone pole,
and it ended way back up in
the pasture. And the bridge
lifted up and moved on back
into the pasture. It came right
up to the edge of our drive-
way. We just stood there with
our arms around each other
on the porch watching the
water come up,” Sroufe said.
“There was a little girl who
lived across the street who
had been babysitting who had
just walked home across the
bridge. She was the last one
who crossed.”
Steidel was the fi rst to
discover that the bridge was
out the hard way, when trying
to cross it, coming home from
the poker game.
“The bridge was gone,”
he said. “My family was on
the other side, and I had to
get over there. There was
water all around me, and then
a house went by. The house
went over into the meadow
and settled down, looked like
someone had built it there.
Hardly disturbed anything
in the house. Somebody said
all it moved was a coffee pot
about a foot on the counter.”
Steidel then thought about
using an old logging route to
get home, but as he was on
his way to the alternate route,
he intercepted several cars
on their way to the bridge.
He stopped his vehicle and
blocked their path.
“‘Get out of my way!’ one
man said to me. ‘Well, I’ll get
out of your way,’ I said, ‘but
you’re not going that way
because the bridge is gone.’
‘Gone?’ the man said. ‘Yes!
Gone!’ I told him.”
In addition to the bridge
being swept away, many
homes on the north side of
Ecola were besieged with
water.
“The north side of the
creek was devastated,” Sroufe
said. “There was a camp-
ground where the Les Shirley
park is today. There was one
trailer there. There was one
woman in that little trailer,
and she got out, but the trailer
was washed out, and all the
houses that were close to the
creek were just inundated.”
When Steidel reached
home after taking the alternate
logging road, he found his
wife and son in a house fi lled
with logs and foam.
Aside from the bridge and
the homes on the north side of
Ecola, not much else had been
affected. Of course, a fair
amount of debris was scat-
tered about town and water
still sat in the streets.
“There were logs and all
kinds of things right down
Hemlock,” Haskell said.
What saved the rest of the
town, Sroufe said, was the
wave’s path up Ecola Creek.
“There really wasn’t much
damage in the town. The wa-
ter came up all around what
was Les Ordway’s service
station, which is that parking
area today (across from Whale
Park), but it didn’t go down
through the rest of the town
because it came right up the
creek,” Sroufe said. “It wasn’t
a wave that came up over the
town like tidal waves do, it
just followed the easiest way
it could go, up the creek.”
Although there was little
damage and no casualties
related to the 1964 in Cannon
Beach, in Newport, the McK-
enzie family lost three of their
children to the brutal force of
the wave.
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was playing poker over at
Frank Hammond’s house.
There were six of us. The
phone rang and one of the
men got up and answered the
phone. ‘They said there’s a
tidal wave coming,’ he said.
We all ignored it, because we
heard that every winter, that
there were some big waves
coming. It wasn’t unusual to
hear that. Then he got another
phone call, and there was a big
bet on the table … about $15.
He hung up the phone real fast,
put on his coat, and headed
for the door. We said, ‘Where
are you going?’ He says, ‘The
last wave broke over, you know
that tree in my driveway … the
last wave broke over the top of
that tree.’”
That tree was 30 feet tall.
The Cannon Beach History
Center recorded Bill Steidel’s
story of the tsunami of 1964 in
a 1995 oral history, and over
15 of the center’s 140 oral
histories mention the event in
some way. The tsunami was
triggered by a 9.2 magnitude
earthquake off the coast of
Alaska, and waves as high as
27 feet hit the Pacifi c North-
west coastline.
Nearly 50 years later, after
the recent tsunami warning
and my very fi rst evacuation,
I thought it would be fi tting
to take a look back at what
Cannon Beach residents had
to say about the March 27,
1964, “tidal wave,” a reminder
that the ocean in our backyard
might, at any time, decide to
invite itself in.
After the second phone
call Steidel mentions, the men
couldn’t ignore the incoming
water.
“We all hit the door at the
same time,” Steidel said. “And
it was just like a Laurel and
Hardy picture, guys trying
to get out of the room, and
then it was repeated, because
all the guys were parked in
Frank Hammond’s parking
lot and they all tried to drive
their cars out of the parking
lot at the same time, and they
couldn’t get out. It was a hell
of a mess.”
Treva Haskell’s husband
was one of those men. He
hurried home to fi nd his wife
wondering what to do about
the storm.
“In the evening, I watched
the 11 o’clock news, and
they said a tidal wave, that
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