ANCHORAGE, Alaska — It has been 48 years since the Good Friday Earthquake that struck Alaska on March 27, 1964 -- but Tay Thomas remembers it vividly.
Thomas was at her Turnagain home with her two children when she felt the first rumble; her instincts told her to head outside, and that's what she did.
"The ground had started shaking and we were flung to the ground by the shaking, it was so hard. We just couldn't stand," Thomas said.
Thomas watched as her home crumbled. The cliff that her house sat on broke off. She says she felt oddly calm as she and her children were also carried toward the water.
"I just felt intense relief that we were alive -- that was the big feeling," says Thomas.
The 9.2 earthquake is the strongest to ever hit North America. More than 100 lives were lost in the quake and tsunamis that followed. Many Alaskans remember exactly where they were at when the ground began to move. Olga Rowland was eight years-old living in Afognak Village.
"I was young and confused," Rowland said. "The tide started going out and it just didn't quit going out. It was like the ocean was looking like it was going to dry up or something."
She says her family moved to higher ground, and was soon evacuated to Kodiak Island. Even though she was a young girl, the memory is a somber one, she says. Her uncle did not make it home. He was on a boat, heading back from Kodiak.
"We heard him saying on the radio, that they just went through a big one and there was a bigger one coming," Rowland said. "(He said) we don't know if we're going to make it. And then there was nothing else after that on the radio."
The village was completely wiped out by a tsunami. Port Lions on Kodiak Island is where the community rebuilt.
