The Strongest Earthquake in North America Barely Killed Anyone. We Checked Why (1964)

The 1964 Good Friday earthquake was the most powerful ever recorded in North America. Magnitude 9.2, and almost five minutes of shaking. And yet the shaking itself barely killed anyone. We went to the USGS reports and the Alaska Railroad's own damage records to find out what really took the lives that day, and what dragged an entire fleet of heavy equipment off the Seward docks and onto the bottom of Resurrection Bay. New here? We publish verified heavy-equipment history several times a week. Subscribe so you never miss a story: 👉 Machinery Vault:    / @machinery-vault   In this video we walk onto the docks at Seward and Valdez on the afternoon of March 27, 1964, and follow what the ground did next. Two gantry cranes and six straddle carriers slide off the Seward railroad dock into Resurrection Bay, one after another. A 10,000-ton freighter in Valdez is thrown onto its side with its propeller turning in open air, and somehow lives. And we settle the myth you will find all over the internet about a single 200-ton crane that supposedly vanished and was never found. Every number here is checked against the primary record: what is verified, what is not, and what really happened. 📌 CHAPTERS 00:00 The Fleet Goes Into Resurrection Bay 02:05 What the Alaska Railroad Lost 04:55 It Wasn't the Shaking 06:30 Valdez and the Ship That Lived 10:10 Still on the Bottom, 60 Years Later SOURCES USGS Professional Paper 542-E — Effects of the Earthquake of March 27, 1964, at Seward, Alaska: https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/pp542E The Alaska Railroad and the 1964 Earthquake (T.C. Fuglestad account): https://www.alaskarails.org/historica... NOAA NCEI — The Great Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/great-... #heavyequipment #machinery #engineering #constructionhistory #documentary #alaskaearthquake #1964 #seward #alaska #tsunami #history