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Like they say, I put the skiff in the water on the
27th at about 3:00 in the afternoon. And I went
over and got aboard the Ribbage. I was sitting in
there and had these red deck boots on and had
a portable radio and had set it up on the ribs on
that boat and was listening to it and a boat went
by and rocked the boat that I was in pretty good. I
thought that guy was pretty stupid for going
through the harbor that fast because the wake is
too big. About that time AFRN, Armed Forces
Radio Network, came on the air and said that
everybody in Kodiak that could hear their voice
better head for high ground and that we'd just
had a major earthquake and had a tidal wave
headed our way.
Pilings and buildings and all that stuff around the
harbor dropped about 5.8 feet, or something like
that. I forget what it is now, but they dropped far
enough that the walking ramps leading down to
the docks fell away and you couldn't get up on
that dock. You couldn't get ashore.
When the tidal waves started coming in there
were five waves as near as they could figure out.
The third wave was the worst and most
devastating wave of all. This was during the first
one while the town was slowly filling up with
water. I tried to get the Ribbage fired up and get
it running to get away from the dock. But I couldn't
so I jumped off the boat and took off running. I
knew where a skiff was. And at that time you
would leave your keys in your truck, boat,
whatever because nobody would bother it. So I
made a run for that skiff and when I went by, I
would straddle the power lines running down the
dock and jumped the cross bars. I turned around
to look to see where my buddy was and about
that time the lines behind me twisted and shorted
out and went "bizzwap!"
I took off and went by Mary Anderson's boat. It
was a red and black, a cape boat. I hollered
down in the boat for her and the kid she had with
her, a young girl. I didn't get any response so I
thought she wasn't there. I went on my way and I
got up by this skiff and there was this teenager
standing there looking around, a tall gangly kid. I
don't know who he was. I told him to get in that
skiff. I thought that guy was going to go clear
through the bottom. He jumped from where he
was clear out into the middle of that skiff. And that
was quite a jump.
I picked up John Ancart who used to be a trout
fisherman up here. There were five of us that
went ashore about where Marine Way hits up
there by base-town work where the only stoplight
that's never worked is at. I reached up with that
skiff and went up through town and went across
the bridge. And the cement rails on the bridge
were barely sticking up out of the water.
We'd started getting sucked up between the
buildings. I was running the outboard and another
guy was steering so I took an oar and kicked us
away from the buildings so the flow of the water
wouldn't suck us in there because there was no
place to go in that one. The water at that point
was about six feet up the side of that building. So
we hit up there on the street by Cy's Sporting
Goods and I took a piece of line and threw it over
a telephone line and tied a bowline in it so the
skiff could float up and down with the current or
any cross current. And I took off up the hill.
When I turned around to look, it looked like just a
pile of little kids' toys in a bathtub. And it looked
like some kid had taken his hand and swirled
them all around in a great big circle.
About that time that's when the boat harbor went
dry. There was no water in the boat harbor. I saw
it go dry; I saw the channel go dry. And I don't
know where, but there was a squirt of water that
came up out of that channel. It must have gone
forty feet up in the air a big squirt of water that
looked like a fan went up. And the earth was still
shaking at the time.