Genie Chance and the Great Alaska Earthquake

[0] Well, I suppose you want to know where I was when this disaster took place.

[1] I was driving on my way home, and I began to feel that the car I had just purchased was a lemon because the wheels appeared to be running off the car.

[2] I managed to stop the car, and I looked at.

[3] in stupefaction at the road about 10 feet ahead of me and saw the road break open.

[4] And then, like two big halves of a huge sandwich, start moving like scissors back and forth, one half moving in one direction, the other half moving in the other direction.

[5] And all the time, while watching the road, it suddenly dawned on me. that this was not an ordinary disaster, that it was perhaps one of the greatest disasters to hit North America.

[6] I kept thinking, what will Alaskans do now?

[7] What will Alaskans do now?

[8] There are moments when the world we take for granted instantaneously changes, when reality is abruptly upended and the unimaginable overwhelms real life.

[9] We don't walk around thinking about, that instability, but we know it's always there.

[10] At random, and without warning, a kind of terrible magic can switch on and scramble our lives.

[11] You may know the feeling.

[12] In 1964, it happened to Anchorage, Alaska, and to a woman named Jeannie Chance.

[13] From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavarro.

[14] This is the Daily.

[15] Today, the great Alaska.

[16] The Great Alaska Earthquake was the biggest earthquake to ever hit North America.

[17] John Mowalm, author of the book This Is Chance, on the story of that disaster and the voice that held the state together.

[18] It's Friday, May 22nd.

[19] Sunday, February 23rd, 1964, a month before the earthquake.

[20] just before 1 p .m. The deciding heat of the World Championship sled dog races was about to start.

[21] They have estimated the crowd as high as 12 ,000 people.

[22] And all of Anchorage, it seemed, had gathered downtown to watch.

[23] And this is the one time of the year, the only time of the year, if we ever get that many people into the last largest city.

[24] And I think it's a wonderful thing.

[25] The races were one of the longest -running traditions in a community that didn't have a lot of traditions yet, something for the fledgling city to look forward to, in the coldest, loneliest stretch of winter.

[26] Yes, you are, thanks to the city of Anchorage.

[27] We'll be back with more after this important message.

[28] Anchorage, Alaska, in 1964, was a blotch of Western civilization in the middle of emptiness.

[29] Alaska had only become the country's 49th state five years earlier, and it was often disregarded as a kind of free -floating addendum to the rest of America.

[30] But Anchorage was Alaska's biggest and proudest city, A community whose essential spirit, one visitor wrote, reached aggressively and greedily to grasp the future, impatient with any suggestion that such things take time.

[31] It was a modern -day frontier town that imagined it was a metropolis.

[32] Okay, back here with more action.

[33] Straining to make itself real.

[34] Here's the countdown now.

[35] One o 'clock dog marching time.

[36] Keith Breyer is off to a real fine start.

[37] Eleven dogs lining out very nicely right.

[38] A local radio station, K .E. and I, was covering the races.

[39] The fire should be out to 15th in Cordova.

[40] Let's get on to Jeannie Chance.

[41] Come in, please.

[42] Jeannie.

[43] And through the broadcast to a part -time reporter named Jeannie Chance, we'd just gotten set up at a radio checkpoint at the top of Cordova Hill.

[44] Right as the sleds dashed by.

[45] Jeannie was relieved she'd made it in time.

[46] She was the only woman covering the event for K .E. and I, and her bosses had given her a tough assignment.

[47] She'd started the day at a spot at the beginning of the course, but once she'd broadcast her play -by -play there, she had to scramble along a few miles of icy roads to this checkpoint further along the route, before the dogs plowed by her again.

[48] But she'd made it, because professionally, Jeannie Chant was relentless.

[49] She had to be.

[50] Jeannie was said to be the first female newsman.

[51] castor in Alaska.

[52] At 37 years old, she was strikingly beautiful with short, wavy blonde hair and high -cut bangs.

[53] She grew up in a small town in Texas, where she'd met her husband Winston and had three kids.

[54] There, Winston sold used cars, but he wasn't particularly good at it.

[55] Even when he did manage to land a commission, he had a habit of blowing it on a steak dinner and drinks before he got home.

[56] The financial strain started to destabilize their marriage, and the pressure fell on Jeannie to hold the family together and make their precarious life feel safe.

[57] We're not poor, she'd tell her children.

[58] We just don't have any money.

[59] At the time, a wave of young Texans was to camping for jobs in Alaska, and Winston was convinced it was a land of opportunity where anyone willing to work could wind up flush.

[60] But Jeannie hesitated.

[61] Alaska didn't sound like a fun adventure to her.

[62] It sounded desolate and dreadful, like moving to the moon.

[63] Then again, if life didn't improve for her in Winston and Anchorage, maybe divorce might feel a little more feasible there.

[64] She'd be at the edge of the world.

[65] Nobody would have to know.

[66] But Alaska didn't solve Winston's troubles with money, and before long, the Chance family was unable to pay the rent.

[67] Winston said not to worry.

[68] He'd sell some cars soon.

[69] Jeannie worried.

[70] And this is what a good wife is supposed to do, she wrote.

[71] Just wait at home for her man to bring money in.

[72] to pay the bills and feed the family?

[73] If other wives do it all the time, why can't I learn to relax and let it happen?

[74] She went to Winston weeping one day, she said, and he told her, well, if you're so worried about paying the rent, why are you sitting on your fat fanny?

[75] Get out there and get a job.

[76] Jeannie was speechless.

[77] Two weeks later, she got herself hired at K .E .N .I. Coming up, Cordova Hill, let's go out to Jeannie Chan.

[78] At the time, Julie Reding, and it's just now at the bottom of Cordova Hill here.

[79] His dogs, too, are looking real good.

[80] At the time, women broadcasters typically covered fashion and homemaking or hosted on -air recipe swaps.

[81] But in her year and a half at the station, Jeannie had forged a role for herself as an industrious roving reporter.

[82] She covered crime in the courts and city hall.

[83] She reported from crabboats and missile sites, burning buildings in Inuit villages.

[84] and sled dog races.

[85] During the final stretch of the race, Jeannie lost herself in the excitement a little and just started shouting, oh, and yes, into her microphone as the musher's past.

[86] And another K .E. and I broadcaster appeared to make a sly, off -color crack about her breathlessness on the air.

[87] Jeannie tried to be gracious and stoic to do what was expected of her without complaint.

[88] She figured this was the only way to diffuse the discomfort.

[89] of the men around her.

[90] At the end of the sled dog races that afternoon, she'd sign off by thanking not only all the Kea and I listeners and spectators, but her male co -workers too.

[91] And she was also sure to thank her husband for his permission.

[92] Thank you, Jeannie.

[93] You did a fine job, and here's Mike Steffen with the dogs in the house.

[94] Sometimes the future falls open without a warning.

[95] The earthquake, when it came, would knock people's lives off -kilter so brutally and abruptly that its powers seemed to reverberate forever.

[96] Some people like Jeannie would find their lives oriented differently in its aftermath.

[97] Others would find their entire worldview had changed.

[98] More than half a century later, an attorney in Anchorage would explain, even now I can look at this solid ground out my window and know it's not permanent.

[99] It can change any time.

[100] It just moves.

[101] Everything moves.

[102] Anyway, this is who Jeannie was, and where everything stood, before what it stood on, moved.

[103] Friday, March 27, 1964, the night of the earthquake.

[104] On the night of Good Friday, 1964, I was writing a letter to a friend in Juneau.

[105] Around 5 .30, Jeannie Chance sat at the typewriter in her bedroom, stealing some time alone before fixing dinner for her husband, Winston, and their three children.

[106] Eight -year -old Jan, 11 -year -old Albert, and 13 -year -old Winston Jr., or Wins, who just then appeared at her bedroom door.

[107] My son, Wince, came to me and said that he just had to get down to the bookstore.

[108] He'd forgotten to buy a copy of the Red Cross Life Saving Manual.

[109] that he was supposed to bring to his swimming class the next morning.

[110] And I said, please, for heaven's sakes, when you have to have something, don't wait until the last minute.

[111] So Jeannie pulled on a pair of boots and a parka and headed out with Wins.

[112] So Wynne and I got in the car, and I was still in somewhat of a unhappy mood about having to make a last minute air on downtown.

[113] At 536, snow was falling as Jeannie and Wince headed downtown.

[114] The city was quiet.

[115] As they approached the intersection of C Street and 9th, the traffic light turned red.

[116] As I touched my brake, the car began to bounce.

[117] The car started bucking.

[118] So I said, oh no, and Wynce is, what's the matter?

[119] And I said, I blow out.

[120] And Jeannie assumes she'd blown a tire.

[121] And then it got worse.

[122] She gripped the wheel.

[123] Wince held on to his seat.

[124] beside her.

[125] For a moment, they bounced violently without speaking a word.

[126] Nothing was said between us for a few minutes.

[127] And I said, you know, it's not a blowout.

[128] It must be a hard wind.

[129] And he says, boy, it's a wind all right.

[130] But the car bounced worse and worse.

[131] And I lowered my window and I heard of banging, this clang banging and looked across.

[132] and on one corner of the intersection.

[133] Cars parked in a line were slamming into one another and separating again, like a grotesque accordion opening and closing.

[134] I saw down the street to my left, two people holding on to each other trying to stand up.

[135] The world and everything in it appeared to be convulsing.

[136] Jeannie's eyes were seeing it, but her mind couldn't organize all this information into a coherent story.

[137] The car continued to bounce and bounce.

[138] Suddenly, she watched the road roll away from the car.

[139] Everybody crack it rolled.

[140] As though some humpbacked shadow creature were surging under its surface, heading for town.

[141] Finally, Jeannie found a word that could fasten together this chaos in her mind.

[142] I said, once this is an earthquake, once could only say, yeah.

[143] The great Alaska earthquake lasted four and a half minutes.

[144] It overwhelmed people the way the strongest emotions do.

[145] It was pure sensation, coming on faster than the intellect's ability to register it.

[146] It was amazing what details people noticed, the focal points their minds locked onto when the world went blurry.

[147] On 4th Avenue, a high school track star watched the window of a stationary store rattle and explode, and he stood there, admiring the perfect hurtling form of the man who came leaping out of it.

[148] At Presbyterian Hospital, one man watched blood seeping into the hall from under a doorway, like a scene in a horror movie.

[149] It took a second for him to realize that the hospital's blood bank had broken open and spilled.

[150] At the J .C. Penny Department Store, a 15 -year -old in the elevator with some friends watched a book that one of them had dropped suddenly levitate off the floor and hang weightless in mid -air right in front of him.

[151] For a split second, it was like they were in orbit.

[152] The elevator was falling.

[153] But Jeannie's mind had already turned to reporting the news.

[154] As soon as it stopped, I looked up and I could see that our television tower was still standing.

[155] She assumed her station would have power back on soon, and that the 6 o 'clock news broadcast would go on as usual.

[156] That meant she had less than 20 minutes to put together a story.

[157] I knew we had no power by the fact that the traffic lights went out, but I knew that our very ingenious engineers would have us on the air very shortly.

[158] So Jeannie sped to the public safety building, where the police and fire departments were headquartered, to round up some details for a quick report.

[159] As I dashed in, I saw that all of their huge, heavy filing cabinets and desks were thrown face down on the floor.

[160] and my son, Wentz, came running in the door, and he yelled, come quick, Pennies is falling.

[161] Standing in the doorway of the public safety building, they could see the brand new J .C. Penny Department store.

[162] The building was a point of pride in Anchorage.

[163] Pennies was one of the first major chain retailers to believe in Alaska enough to build in the state.

[164] But as I stood there and watched...

[165] But now, as Jeannie and Wince watched through the flurrying snow...

[166] The big slabs of concrete wall.

[167] silently break loose and start toward the ground.

[168] A tremendous concrete panel from the exterior started to swing away from the building, as though on a hinge.

[169] And it fell to the street with a roar, the deafening roar.

[170] With the facade peeled off, parts of the store were now open to the cold air, exposed like the rooms of a dollhouse.

[171] And Wince looked at me and I saw horror in his eyes.

[172] All at once, she registered the extent of the wreckage surround.

[173] surrounding her.

[174] A voice said something about people buried in the rubble.

[175] A group of men came running down the street, yelling Fourth Avenue is gone.

[176] And behind them, Jeannie could see the roof of a familiar building resting on the street, jabbed into the pavement at an incomprehensible angle.

[177] Then was the first time that I thought the first thing I must do before I can go any further is get my family together and make sure everything is all right.

[178] I've been.

[179] wheeled out of there and headed home.

[180] Oh, before we got home, I could see the house was still standing, and I remember breathing out loud, thank God.

[181] As she pulled up, Jan and Albert shot out of the neighbor's house across the street.

[182] Wins leapt out of the car and ran to his sister and brother.

[183] I said, Pennies has fallen down, and there's more damage downtown.

[184] And Al then pulled off from me, and he looked at me very soberly, and he said, I'm all right.

[185] Don't worry about me. Go on and do your job.

[186] All three chance children began to understand without being told that their mother would be leaving again.

[187] Jeannie was proud of how self -sufficient her kids had become, but whatever pride she felt was undercut by guilt.

[188] She knew her family was growing independent of her out of necessity because she wasn't around as much as other mothers and wives were.

[189] Down in the lower 48, the women's movement was underway, but Anger, Anchorage was 1 ,500 miles away from the rest of America.

[190] And feminism wasn't a word Jeannie used.

[191] Her struggle to balance work and family felt like a problem unique to her.

[192] And isolated moments could trigger self -doubt.

[193] At breakfast one morning, a few weeks earlier, the family was watching through the kitchen window as their neighbors scraped the ice off her husband's Cadillac before he left for work.

[194] This was the custom among many Anchorage wives.

[195] but in the chance home, the rolls were reversed.

[196] Winston warmed up the car for Jeannie.

[197] Now Winston asked her, Honey, if I get you a Cadillac like that, would you scrape the ice off and warm it up yourself?

[198] There must have been a tinge of disgruntlement in his voice because before Jeannie could answer, 8 -year -old Jan interrupted to remind her father that he was actually very lucky.

[199] It's not everyone who gets to warm up the car for Jeannie Chance.

[200] It was funny, but uncomfortable.

[201] And in hindsight, it might feel ominous too, since after the earthquake, the more successful Jeannie became, the more Winston seethed.

[202] It was nearly 6 o 'clock, about 20 minutes since the quake, the last half hour of daylight.

[203] So I headed immediately back down to the downtown area, still thoroughly confident we would be on the air in a very short time, and I would have to have something to say.

[204] As Jeannie headed back downtown, she kept her transistor radio tuned to K .E. and I, hoping the station would be back on air in time for the hourly newscast.

[205] But so far, nothing, only static.

[206] Went on down.

[207] Toward Penny's on the...

[208] Within minutes, she was back at J .C. Penny.

[209] She parked and approached the store, but stopped short in front of a slab of something in the snow.

[210] She stared at it.

[211] mesmerized and repulsed, but couldn't place what it was.

[212] She remembered as a girl in Texas watching her father kill off his few remaining hogs after a snowstorm and hang their fleshless hindquarters from the rafters of the barn.

[213] This thing in the snow reminded Jeannie of that somehow.

[214] Finally, a man shouted an explanation to her.

[215] It was half a woman, he said.

[216] He'd seen her get struck by the fall.

[217] debris.

[218] Jeannie moved on quickly.

[219] I went on over to Fourth Avenue to survey the damage there so that I could make a report, and I was horrified to discover that two whole blocks had simply fallen into a crack that had opened up, and there was no street under them.

[220] For two whole blocks, everything was wedged in a ragged chasm that had ripped open under the street.

[221] Fourth Avenue has just collapsed.

[222] It's just collapsed.

[223] Soon, an aftershock struck.

[224] The windows of a bank started popping, spraying glass across the sidewalk ahead of Jeannie as she headed back to her car.

[225] Her transistor radio still tuned to Ke and I continued to broadcast static.

[226] It was snowing hard.

[227] The sun was setting.

[228] The city going dark.

[229] No telling how many people left at home without heat, without power, without telephones.

[230] Jeannie knew that the citizens of Anchorage were scattered around, cut off from each other.

[231] The electrical grid was down.

[232] Most phone lines were dead.

[233] There'd be no way to know exactly what had happened or how thoroughly their world had been jumbled.

[234] I realized that if there's any way I can be of service, I've got to do it.

[235] I heard the weird strains of music coming over our K -E -N -I station, and I knew that our auxiliary unit had gotten on the air.

[236] We were on the air some way.

[237] Because of the disaster we have just experienced in the emergency condition which now exists.

[238] When an announcer finally broke through, I called in.

[239] Jeannie called the station from the portable radio unit in her car, explaining that she was ready to make a report about the situation downtown.

[240] It has become obvious that the earthquake struck Anchorage less than an hour ago was a major one.

[241] She spoke fast, taking sharp, quick breaths.

[242] The JC Penny building had two walls collapse.

[243] However, is believed at this time that everyone who was inside the building managed to escape safely.

[244] There is a two -block portion on 4th Avenue where the buildings just sunk into the ground.

[245] She was astonished later when people told her she sounded calm.

[246] Ke and I will keep you informed throughout the night.

[247] So stay tuned to your radios.

[248] Check on your neighbors, see if they have transistor radios, if they don't possibly they could move in with you and share one for tonight.

[249] It seems like it's going to be a long cold night for Anchorage.

[250] So prepare to batten down the hatches and stay tuned to K &I.

[251] Jeannie drove back to the public safety building where city officials were gathering.

[252] She told the fire chief and police chief that K .E. and I was on the air again and that she had her mobile unit ready to go live.

[253] They were free to use her rig to broadcast announcements.

[254] Without much thought, the police chief immediately offloaded that job on Jeannie.

[255] She was going to be the one talking to Anchorage, he told.

[256] Yes, Tunitans inside civil defense headquarters here at the public safety building at the corner of 6th and C in Anchorage.

[257] She started reeling off the information she'd collected, taking uncertain stock of Anchorage's wounds.

[258] There is apparently a great deal of damage just west of L Street there at 9th Avenue.

[259] We have received word from the state police that the Eagle River Bridge is passable.

[260] We had the two docks owned by the oil company.

[261] down there at Seward are currently on fire.

[262] She listed the locations of public shelters opening up for the displaced and started directing equipment and personnel around the city.

[263] Anybody who has a spare chlorinator, they are in dire need of a chlorinator.

[264] They're at Providence Hospital.

[265] All electricians and plumbers, please go to building 700.

[266] All line personnel report to work as soon as possible.

[267] Well, are we ready to go again?

[268] The plug got kicked here.

[269] and we ran out of power.

[270] I thought maybe it was one of those little tremories.

[271] I don't know if you're sitting a thing.

[272] To contact Chuck Dumond, Chuck Dumond, he is needed urgently to install the chlorinator at Providence Hospital needs six cases of six inch plaster of Paris.

[273] This is a message for Mr. Grace.

[274] The city manager swept through, ordering her to put out a call for diesel fuel.

[275] Some diesel fuel oil down at the site of the church.

[276] A public health official stood over her shoulder.

[277] In order to make it pure, while she repeated his instructions for purifying snow for drinking water.

[278] You want to add one teaspoon of household bleach to every five gallons of water.

[279] Be sure not to just melt it, but boil it also.

[280] Right now, that is the sea.

[281] Jeannie understood that everyone would be trapped together for the foreseeable future, in the snow, in the dark, with no electricity and below freezing temperatures.

[282] Under those circumstances, she wrote later, mass hysteria would have meant total destruction.

[283] The chlorinator, we're happy to report, has been installed at Providence Hospital.

[284] Essentially, she was doing her job.

[285] She was talking to Anchorage on the radio.

[286] As one man put it, Jeannie Chance was telling everyone, you're not alone.

[287] K -E -N -I radio will fit in where we are needed.

[288] and do our best to carry on, 24 hours a day.

[289] We have another message to Mr. And that's how the first hours unfolded.

[290] But something else was happening that Friday night, too.

[291] The thread of this story that, as time passed, would come to feel almost like folklore.

[292] Mr. and Mrs. R .W. Fisher have lost their children.

[293] They can't find them.

[294] Mr. and Mrs. Fisher are at the home of Charles Vall.

[295] At the public safety building, ordinary people who were separated from their children or other family members started stumbling up to Jeannie's counter and asking her for help.

[296] They were converging on Jeannie, desperate to know if somebody they loved was safe, to find one another, to shout across their fractured city in the dark.

[297] Bill Noble would like to get a message if at all possible as to their whereabouts and if they are all right.

[298] Merrill Sleager, who lives on 86th Avenue, please come home.

[299] Mr. and Mrs. Dick Fisher are still here at the police headquarters at 6th and C, waiting for any word of their children.

[300] Their home went off the bluff.

[301] They're out there in the Turnigan area where we understand a great deal of damage.

[302] They hoped that Jeannie could amplify their voices with her own.

[303] And then, as the night went on, A message to Kenneth Sadler.

[304] Mrs. Sadler is fine.

[305] Kenneth Sadler is out in the bush and listens on a transistor radio.

[306] Mrs. Sadler is fine.

[307] A message to Walter Hart at Kenai.

[308] Lee Hart is fine.

[309] We have another message that Bob DeLoge is all right.

[310] Jim Murphy and Bill Somerville at Point Hope.

[311] Your families are A -O -K.

[312] Frank Smith at Beluga, your family is safe and at the home of Red Dodge.

[313] I also have received a report from a person who is monitoring stations from...

[314] All the people one after another.

[315] calling in to report that they were okay.

[316] You could hear the potential death toll in the city gradually ticking down.

[317] And with each small declaration of survival that aired, you could imagine a constellation of affirming flames, slowly lighting the emptiness outside.

[318] Finally, I've been so involved trying to assist down here in the coordination of...

[319] It was Jeannie's turn.

[320] That I really hadn't stopped to think how worried and concerned my parents must have So if my friends in Fairbanks would take down a message for me and get the word to my family in Bonham, Texas, that the chance family is all right.

[321] Place a collect call to Judge A .S. Broadfoot, B -R -O -A -D -F -O -O -T at Bonham, Texas, and tell him that the chance family is all right.

[322] I'll appreciate this if the message can get to Texas, or I know that my family is.

[323] It was still dark early on Saturday morning when the telephone rang at the home of Judge and Mrs. A .S. Broadfoot in Bonham, Texas.

[324] The caller explained that he'd just received a phone call from his son, who lived in Fairbanks.

[325] There'd been a terrible earthquake in Alaska, his son told him.

[326] But believe it or not, he was listening to the Broadfoot's daughter, Jeannie Chance, covering the disaster on the radio right now.

[327] He just heard her ask for someone to phone her parents in Texas and tell them, the chance family is all right.

[328] The phone rang again.

[329] This time, it was a perfect stranger, a military officer in Fairbanks calling collect, just like Jeannie had instructed on the air.

[330] He was passing on the same message.

[331] The chance family is all right.

[332] From then on, the phone rang constantly, Jeannie's mother wrote.

[333] And as soon as it sunk in that her daughter and grandchildren were safe, she said, I just let down and bawled, and a boo -hoo of all time.

[334] Back in Anchorage, 13 hours after the quake hit, Jeannie was still on the air.

[335] She'd been working straight through the night.

[336] And as the city went to sleep in the early hours of the morning, despite their power being out and their phone lines down, they'd been connected to one another once again.

[337] Saturday, March 28, 1964, the day after the earthquake.

[338] Early that morning, as news of the great Alaska earthquake filtered into the outside world, Word reached a small team of sociologists at the Disaster Research Center at Ohio State University.

[339] It was a brand -new institute funded by the Department of Defense to send social scientists as quickly as possible to wherever a disaster struck.

[340] The Cold War was escalating, and the military was desperate to prepare America for the possibility of nuclear war.

[341] One of its presiding assumptions was that a bomb dropped on the United States wouldn't just cause physical destruction, but pandemonium, lawlessness, and violence among the survivors, too.

[342] The government needed to get a handle on how to manage that chaos, and they'd locked on to natural disasters as realistic proxies.

[343] Each community, hit by an earthquake, hurricane, or flood, would be like to be like to be.

[344] a laboratory, a full -scale simulation in which a team of sociologists could scrutinize that breakdown of society in advance.

[345] Now, the sociologists in Ohio were hearing rumors that downtown Anchorage had been swallowed in a ball of fire.

[346] The trauma and confusion would be horrific.

[347] Professionally speaking, it was too good to be true.

[348] They roused me out of bed, one of their grad students said.

[349] I threw on my duds, and I was off to the airport in an hour and a half.

[350] But when the disaster researchers started touching down...

[351] And we'll be able to notify you where you will be able to go get sea rations to feed...

[352] They couldn't find the chaos they'd come to document.

[353] So we are making arrangements at this time for civil defense and the military to supply sea rations that can be carried to these public shelters.

[354] Stay tuned to KKK &I, and we will be a few years.

[355] The sociologists learned, for example, that when Presbyterian Hospital started filling with gas after the quake, Boy Scouts, who'd been distributing phone books in the neighborhood, helped walk all the hospital's patients down three or four flights of stairs, and an armada of taxis and other civilian drivers pulled up outside to evacuate everyone to a second hospital across town.

[356] We are still having a number of people coming in and offering their services here in the public safety building.

[357] I believe everything is pretty well under control.

[358] Outside the crumbling J .C. Penny building, bystanders rushed to dig people out and work together to tow away a huge section of the fallen concrete facade, then extract a woman who'd been crushed beneath it in her station wagon.

[359] It was very heartwarming, of course, to see the way these families did get back together because quite a few of them were.

[360] Everywhere in Anchorage, clusters of ordinary people had gone straight to work, spontaneously, teeming up and switching on like a kind of civic immune response.

[361] They just started solving whatever problems they saw in front of them and often surprised themselves by how capably they were getting the job done.

[362] Jeannie was one of those people.

[363] All military and civilian personnel are giving a terrific effort right now on an evaluation...

[364] One man told the sociologists, everybody jumped right in.

[365] Everybody was trying to do a little bit of everything for everybody.

[366] Since then, an entire field of sociology has documented the same phenomenon in disasters around the world, and eventually two founders of the Disaster Research Center would theorize about why, why disasters seem to bring out the best in people.

[367] In ordinary life, they wrote, we suffer alone.

[368] Any struggle, any pain winds up isolating us from other people, or even making us resentful of everybody else who seem to somehow have it easier.

[369] But in a disaster, an entire community suffers together.

[370] Trauma and even death, the stuff that we suppress in daily life, spills out as a public phenomenon for everyone to see.

[371] The present becomes all -consuming, the past and the future fall away.

[372] And all those who share in the experience, the researchers wrote, are brought together in a very powerful, psychological sense.

[373] And something else happens.

[374] When everything gets scrambled, our assumptions about each other and ourselves get scrambled too.

[375] As another sociologist put it, the instant disaster strikes, life becomes like molten metal.

[376] It enters a state of flux from which it must reset upon a principle, a creed, or purpose.

[377] It is shaken, perhaps violently, out of rut and routine.

[378] What he's really saying is, in catastrophe, there's an opportunity for transformation.

[379] Jeannie finally stepped away from her microphone at 3 o 'clock on Saturday, but she was back two hours later, claiming to have taken a nap.

[380] Journalists were descending on Anchorage by then, and Jeannie spoke with one group from Europe and was taken aback when they instantly recognized her name.

[381] Oh, yes, they told her.

[382] We've heard you on the radio.

[383] Her voice had traveled around the world, spraying out of anchorage on an array of convoluted paths.

[384] All electrations and plumbers of Fort Ridge go to building 700 immediately.

[385] One originated at K .A. and I's sister station in Fairbanks, which also relayed that signal to a radio station in Juneau.

[386] Then a man in Juneau telephoned a radio station in Seattle and seemed to simply hold his phone up to the radio and let the broadcast play.

[387] The announcer in Seattle threw that call onto his own airwaves.

[388] The sound relayed and relayed and relayed again was thin, distant, and hissy.

[389] But there was Jeannie, unmistakably, churning through personal messages from Alaska and separated from their loved ones.

[390] She later wrote to an editor in London, Just a little old housewife and mother helping out with the family finances being heard around the world?

[391] How crazy can this world be?

[392] Without realizing it, Jeannie had become famous.

[393] The next week, as Alaska's legislature began putting together a plan to rebuild the state, the Speaker of the House called a session to order by recognizing Jeannie.

[394] She got a standing ovation.

[395] The following year, as Anchorage's neighborhoods and businesses, came back to life.

[396] McCall's Magazine, as you probably know, presents Golden Mike Awards.

[397] Jeannie won a national award for women broadcasters.

[398] A lovely young lady who received the Gold of Mike Award as Mrs. Jeannie Chance.

[399] Honoring her coverage of the earthquake.

[400] Many people have asked me, how could you do it?

[401] I'm sure that any woman could do the same thing.

[402] It just so happened that it was my fate.

[403] As the story of the disaster started to be written, Jeannie became one of its recurring characters.

[404] The media called her the voice of Alaska, a stand -in for the resourcefulness and composure of an entire state.

[405] The quake had temporarily unraveled the fabric of society, and Jeannie had found the space to slip through.

[406] But then that fabric stitched together again, and Jeannie didn't fit.

[407] She asked Ke and I for a raise, but was told that she was already making the highest salary for a woman.

[408] She quit the same day.

[409] At home, Winston felt increasingly overshadowed by her.

[410] It turns out he'd been physically abusing Jeannie for years, and now it got worse.

[411] Eventually, she was through with it.

[412] She filed for divorce.

[413] Soon, people around Anchorage were asking her if she'd ever thought about running for office, and she'd spend the better part of the 70s in the Alaska State Legislature, ramming through as much progressive legislation as she could, often while wearing a frosted blonde wig, short skirt, and white go -go boots on the chamber floor.

[414] As one of Jeannie's young aides put it to me, she was making up for lost time.

[415] January 8, 2017, 53 years after the earthquake.

[416] I'm sitting in a basement in Juneau, Alaska, surrounded by boxes of Jeannie Chances Things.

[417] Jeannie's daughter, Jan, has kept them all here for years, not knowing what to do with them.

[418] There were 38 boxes in all, filled with real -to -reel recordings of radio broadcasts, old diaries and letters and photographs, and I'd spend days in Jan's basement over the next couple of years looking through all of it, at every document inside, from a lock of Jeannie's baby hair to one of her campaign posters, with a photo of her in a fur -line parka holding a radio microphone.

[419] and that image of her might have seemed like the fairy tale ending to the story of Jeannie and the earthquake except I was starting to realize that this story is about the deceptiveness of such endings the potential for circumstances that feel conclusive and stable to randomly come apart because there were more boxes after that lots of them and in those Jeannie lost her seat in the legislature to a slimy Californian transplant who ran a bare -knuckled campaign Wins, the son who'd been with her in the car the evening of the quake, was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1990, just shy of his 40th birthday.

[420] And her other son, Al, was in and out of rehab, and would die a few years after that.

[421] Then Jeannie's second husband died, and as soon as he was gone, Jeannie was hit by dementia, hard.

[422] That's why the boxes were there, unopened.

[423] Jeannie had packed them up, planning to write her automobile.

[424] biography, but she never got the chance.

[425] I'll be honest, it was pretty depressing.

[426] I'd never heard of Jeannie Chance.

[427] I'd never even heard of the Great Alaska earthquake.

[428] And it was unsettling that something so consequential, the most powerful earthquake in North America could recede so invisibly into history.

[429] To take in a stranger's entire life at that speed, blurred and compressed so dramatically, started to make me feel like maybe time itself was slow -moving natural disaster that eventually shakes everything apart.

[430] And from such a telescopic distance, it was impossible not to recognize the form that all our lives assume.

[431] A forgettable blip, a meaningless straight line from birth to death.

[432] At some point, sitting in that basement, I started picturing my own boxes in one of my own daughter's basements one day.

[433] And then I imagine how many other sets of boxes are already out there, and how many people hadn't left boxes at all.

[434] And maybe this part's harder to explain.

[435] It doesn't feel depressing to me now.

[436] Because I also know that sealed inside this vulnerable little snow globe we call the present, life feels anything but forgettable and meaningless.

[437] And that recognizing the starkness of it all, the course our straight line is taking liberates us into the present.

[438] It imbues life with immediacy, just like a disaster does.

[439] And just like disaster, it gives us the chance to expand those boundaries the only way we can by reaching out, by connecting our lives to the lives of others, by thatching our lines together like a net.

[440] The Daily is made by Theo Balcom, Andy Mills, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Custer, Lindsay Garrison, Annie Brown, Claire Tennisketter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Jonathan Wolfe, Lisa Chow, Eric Kruppki, Mark George, Luke Vanderplug, Adiza Egan, Kelly Prime, Julia Longoria, Sindu Yana Sambandun, M .Jewa Davis Lynn, Austin Mitchell, Sayer Kavado, Nina Pottuck, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Gimet, Hans Buto, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoit, Bianca Gaver, and Astha Chaturvedi.

[441] Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

[442] Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Michaela Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Jablani, Nora Keller, Alex O 'rington, and John Mowalm, for bringing us today's episode from his book, This Is Chance.

[443] That's it for the Daily.

[444] I'm Michael Babaro.

[445] See you on Tuesday after the holiday.