Spring is finally here, and we’ve had the ATVs out a few times, which is always fun. Aside from ice-out, bears waking up, and summer birds returning, a sure sign of spring in the Great Land is the humming on ATVs.
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Some other stuff has been happening, too; for example, Alaska just had one of the biggest tsunamis in recorded history.
Bretwood Higman has spent years scouring Alaska’s mountains for signs of potential landslides. One spot he looked: Tracy Arm Fjord – a popular cruise destination between Juneau and Petersburg.
“I didn’t see anything. So I didn’t have anything marked,” Higman said. “I’ve been working on mapping all across Alaska.”
So he was caught completely off-guard when a mountainside collapsed into the fjord early one morning last August, generating one of the largest landslide tsunamis in recorded history. The tsunami, which at its highest point was nearly as tall as One World Trade Center in New York City, scoured vegetation off the fjord’s walls as it barreled down the narrow channel.
That’s a big tsunami. Note that this one was much more localized than tsunamis like the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami or the one that hit the Fukushima area in Japan in 2011. But the fact that the water was channeled into a narrow fjord was what made is so spectacular. It’s also why most folks in the lower 48 didn’t hear about it.
The landslide came down on Aug. 10 at 5:20 in the morning, so no boats were present. But the area regularly sees more than 20 boats a day in the summer, including large cruise ships that can carry up to 6,000 people.
“This could be really catastrophic if it were to happen at 10 a.m., during the day,” said Ezgi Karasozen, a research seismologist with the Alaska Earthquake Center.
Higman agrees.
“I have tried to encourage my colleagues to look at this and explicitly acknowledge it as a failure,” said Higman, who is a geologist and the executive director of Ground Truth Alaska, an educational nonprofit focused on Alaska’s environment. “We clearly did not identify this beforehand.”
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And, yeah, that could have been really bad; fortunately, it came at a time of day when most folks weren’t out on the water yet.
Alaska Man score: No score for acts of nature, but we’re just glad no one was hurt.
Read More: Alaska Man Monday: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Now here’s a new one; this dumb crook tried to drive his car into the Wasilla Police Department headquarters, then sprayed bear spray at a responding officer.
A 41-year-old Palmer man crashed a car into the lobby doors of the Wasilla Police Department and deployed bear spray in an attempt to intentionally hurt police officers on Wednesday evening, police said in an update on Thursday.
Security footage released by the department shows the entire incident, which occurred at 4:43 p.m., according to the video’s timestamp.
The video shows the car being driven across the department’s north entrance parking lot, around concrete barriers, then over the grass lawn and into the glass doors at the entry foyer.
Police identified the driver as 41-year-old Thomas Desalvo II.
But wait! There’s more!
During the arrest, officers observed multiple unusual wires inside the vehicle running to a dashboard switch and around the cabin.
Police evacuated the department and nearby high school ball fields as a precaution while officers investigated the vehicle.
Anchorage FBI special agent bomb technicians and members of the Anchorage Bomb Squad responded and determined there was no further threat from the vehicle, according to an update from Wasilla police.
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Well, that’s a new one. We have our share of crooks up here; that seems to be something that every locale has to deal with, one way or another. But this is, I think, a first for Wasilla, wherein a guy weaponizes his vehicle and then utterly fails.
Alaska Man score: 2.25 moose nuggets. Points added for creativity and the Alaska-ness of using bear spray, and for giving us all a chuckle.
Read More: Alaska Man Monday – Airplanes, Place Names, and Summer Flowers
Now then, let’s talk about biomes, carbon, oxygen, and all these trees around here.
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