Where this was said
Ad Break & Aftermath: LBJ Declares Disaster
At 18:00 · chapter starts 17:50
The earthquake stopped, but the chaos didn't. Telephone lines were down, roads were destroyed, railroads were gone — Alaska was effectively cut off from the outside world. For families with loved ones in the affected areas, this communication blackout was its own kind of anguish [1] — Josh "$3 billion in today's dollars damage: The total damage from the 1964 Alaska earthquake is estimated at approximately $3 billion in today's …" 17:20 . President Lyndon Johnson declared Alaska a major disaster area the day after the quake. Josh puts the scale of the damage in context: approximately $3 billion in today's dollars, in a state with a population of only around 250,000 people. Some communities chose to rebuild exactly where they had been; others relocated entirely. The Army Corps of Engineers told Valdez residents — roughly 500 of them — that they had 3 years to vacate, and relocated the entire town 4 miles away. Today, Valdez has nearly 4,000 residents. The old townsite was burned to the ground to prevent squatting.
In 1964, plate tectonics was still being actively debated. The Alaska earthquake changed that almost overnight — the evidence it produced was so comprehensive and definitive that it effectively ended the debate and cemented plate tectonics as scientific consensus.
