Hi, My name is Nancy Bidwell and I was a 17 year old Senior at West High in 1964. I lost my second floor locker in the earthquake. My brand new Kodiak camera was in my locker and I never saw it again! I was also on 4th avenue when the quake hit and I lived with my family in Turnagain By The Sea subdivision.

I have added a link to a story from KTVA Channel 11 Earthquake Series that aired earlier this week. Lauren Maxwell interviewed me and I got tell the horrifying details of my experience being in the '64 Earthquake.

http://www.ktva.com/50th-anniversary-of-great-quake-looms/

I still live in Anchorage and have for 64 years! I plan on attending as many of the Earthquake events for the Anniversary of the quake, as I can.

I was 10 years old. I was hanging out in the daylight basement of our house with my younger brother, Mark, and some neighborhood friends. We had just settled in to watching Fireball XL5 on our old console TV. It was 5:36 PM, Friday, March 27, 1964.

Suddenly, with a shudder, the world went crazy! Everything started moving and rolling. The console TV started rolling toward us. We all grabbed it and started pushing back so it wouldn’t roll over us. Then a crack opened up in the basement floor. Mark’s sock toe dipped into it and the crack closed up on it. Mark jerked his foot back and it pulled out of his sock, leaving the sock behind in the closed crack. My parents, who had just gotten into the car to go to the store and were pulling out of the driveway, jumped out of the car and started yelling at us kids to get out of the house! Everyone ran up the stairs and out the front door! Everyone that is, except me. I ran up the stairs to the landing with everyone, and then continued upstairs to see what was happening. Everything was still moving, like rolling waves on the ocean. I looked into my parent’s bedroom. Nothing was out of place. I looked into the living room and everything was jumbled up and moving around. I ran into the dining room, where everything was in place, and looked out the picture window into our backyard. As I stood there I saw a huge birch tree, still vertical but starting to cant to the left, move from right to left across my view through the window–like it was walking! That was when I got scared. I ran out of the house and into the street. Then the rolling and shaking stopped and the world was deathly quiet, and very still. I stood there, shivering in the cold, with my family and friends. I will never forget it.

Before the 1964 Alaska Earthquake our house, at 2715 McCollie Ave., in Turnagain Heights, Anchorage, Alaska, was located several hundred feet from the bluff overlooking Cook Inlet. After the earthquake we had a bluff view lot, overlooking the blocky jumbled remains of our neighbor’s houses, a quarter mile from the edge of Cook Inlet.