Friends,

Just a little more about our trip last week to Anchorage and Valdez.  One of the defining points in the history of southern Alaska was the 1964 earthquake.  It was the second strongest earthquake ever recorded in the world and the most powerful in North America.  It struck in the evening of Good Friday.  Massive damage resulted in Anchorage and surrounding areas.  The town of Valdez was not built on solid ground, but on silt from the glaciers.  (Those of you from Colorado may remember that when irrigating there would sometimes a buildup of mud which if you would pat it with a shovel it would become jelly like.)  So some of the silt that Valdez port was built on "liquified" and slid into Prince William Sound.  This caused a massive tsunami that killed 30 people who were in the port area of Valdez.  We have been told that one lady we know at church lost her first husband and two sons who were swallowed up by the tsunami.  The army corps of engineers determined that it was unsafe for the town of Valdez to be in that area because another earthquake would cause more of the town to slide into the water.  So the town was given two years to move four miles to a site that was on solid footing.

The second defining point for Valdez was the "Exxon Valdez" oil spill.  That was March 24, 1989.  Over 10 million gallons of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez.  This is considered to be the worst human-caused disaster of all history.  More oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 but that was not as near land and much of that oil dissipated into the seawater of the Gulf.  In the Valdez area there were a great number of sea and shore animals that were killed.  I remember seeing pictures of that event 25 years ago showing birds and seals soaked in oil.

It is interesting that this year is the 50th anniversary of the earthquake and the 25th anniversary of the oil spill.  So we were hearing a lot about those two disasters in the news a couple months ago.  This is a ship that was tossed onto the shore above the port and left as a reminder of that disaster.

The oil that spilled would have come to Valdez by the Alaska oil pipeline and gathered into tanks like these seen from across Prince William Sound.  My guess is that we were six to eight miles from these tanks when we took these pictures.

 There are pumping stations to get the oil from the tanks and onto the sea-going tankers.

And the tankers ships are still busy.

And the pipeline is still busy bringing crude oil.

The oil spill cleanup was a massive undertaking.  The motel we stayed in in Valdez was originally offices for people who were there to manage the cleanup.

It is in two parts connected in the middle.  The original understanding was that when the cleanup was completed the buildings would be transformed into motels by adding (seen in the pictures extending out from the building) restrooms to each office.  Seen above for the nearest building are restrooms for eight rooms.

Interestingly, several miles outside of Valdez is a "man camp."  Men who work on the pipeline alternate "on the job" for a couple weeks and "off the job" for a couple weeks.  The families of these men live elsewhere.  The workers are flown back and forth by the company.  While on the job they live in these dorm buildings called the "man camp."

This picture shows about half of the dorms at the "man camp."  The motel we stayed in was like two of these before the restrooms were added.

We were glad for this trip.  Without it our trip this year would have been to Fairbanks and not to Alaska.  We still plan to see the Arctic coast at Barrow in a couple weeks.  It is the furthermost point of the North America mainland.  Parts of Greenland and Canadian islands are further north.

We went to an auto museum here in Fairbanks.  It is by far the best auto museum I have ever seen, though I have not seen many.  There were around 70 cars there from the very oldest up to the early 30's.  Many of the cars were models of which there are only two, three, or four still in existence.  They also had women's fashions that matched the eras of the cars.  Many vehicles were unique to Alaska.  There was an early International Harvester car.  I did not know that IH ever made cars.  I could not get these pictures into the blog so they are attached to the e-mail announcing this blog.

This will be it for another week.  May this be a good week for you with God's blessing noticeably upon you.

Larry and Elva