This photo was taken about one month before the April 1, 1946 tsunamis hit. The condition of this original 10" x 8.25" photo is very good. Damaged Hilo Iron Works Building. Aloha and welcome to the Hilo Bay Web Camera. He guided a group of children—some, like Johnston, still barefoot—into the forest behind the houses, chopping a path through vines and trees with another man. On April 1, 1946, the sea floor ruptured just south of Unimak Island in the Aleutian Islands. The residents of Hilo learned a hard lesson about the downside of their picturesque Hilo Bay, but it took two killer tsunamis. You don't know how many waves might still be coming. Johnston and her brother looked around at random debris and wondered what had happened, until her brother tugged at her shirt. 1946 Aleutian tsunami. Eddie and other adults delivered the children to a radio tower and higher ground, where the kids played. “If you get them interested in stories you can teach them what to do and how these people were saved. It was a 8.6-magnitude earthquake off the Aleutian Islands that triggered the 1946 tsunami. Destroyed railroad tracks on Hilo’s Bayfront. Rod Mason photo, courtesy Pacific Tsunami Museum. Wait until Civil Defense gives the all-clear signal. LAUPAHOEHOE POINT For more than 70 years, a memorial at Laupahoehoe Point has stood in tribute to the two dozen community members who lost their lives when a tsunami devastated East Hawaii in 1946. Approximately 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface a 7.4 magnitude tremor was recorded in the North Pacific, triggering deadly tidal waves through the Pacific. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. It was anything but a joke. 1, 1946, which killed 159 people in Hawaii, by 1960, people would flock to the Hilo Bayfront when warned of an impending tsunami — which, technically, isn’t a tidal wave — to do just that. Residents rebuilt Shinmachi in the same area, which would prove disastrous with the arrival of the next major Hilo tsunami 14 years later. Drivers who didn’t realize the road damage were honking at others who had stopped. In the middle of the night on April 1, 1946, an undersea earthquake in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska triggered a massive tsunami that killed 159 people in Hawaii. “He and I wouldn’t have been here today if it hadn’t have been for those red ants.”. Unimak Island was hit by the tsunami shortly after the quake. Since it was established by an Act of Congress in 1946, scientists at the Geophysical Institute have studied geophysical processes from the center of the Earth to the surface of the sun and beyond, turning data and observations into information useful for state, Arctic and national priorities. Jeanne Branch and her brother David Branch in Hilo, Hawaii. At about 6 p.m., more than a day after the earthquake, the tsunami struck the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Seawater displaced by the giant earthquake sent a 100-foot wave into the Scotch Cape lighthouse on Unimak, destroying the concrete structure and killing the five men inside. Home / Hilo Bay Web Camera. The massive wave was seen as far away as Chile, where, 18 hours after the quake near Alaska, unusually large waves crashed ashore. This tsunami prompted the U.S. to establish the Seismic SeaWave Warning System two years later. Four hours and 20 minutes after the big earthquake in the Aleutians, the first of several tsunami waves reached Hawaii. Never go down to investigate tsunami damage. The first, in 1946 and before any coordinated warning system, surged up the bay one morning, sending residents fleeing up Hilo's sloping downtown streets. In both cases, dozens of people on the Big Island were killed. The most destructive tsunami in Hawaii occurred on April 1, 1946 after an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter Scale struck the ocean floor off the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. “I found that people are captivated by stories, but not very interested in mitigation info,” she said. At the peak of his career, Marvin Gaye was the Prince of Motown—the soulful voice behind hits as wide-ranging as “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology).” Like his label-mate Stevie Wonder, Gaye both epitomized and outgrew the crowd-pleasing sound ...read more, Jane Austen responds to a letter from the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) suggesting she write a historic romance, saying, “I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.” Austen’s correspondence with the Prince Regent, as ...read more, On April 1, 1963, the ABC television network airs the premiere episode of General Hospital, the daytime drama that will become the network’s most enduring soap opera and the longest-running serial program produced in Hollywood.