Module IV - Cataclysmic Events

Essential Question: How do stories of cataclysmic events help inform students about geosciences and cultures?

Growing up in Southeast, only about 320 miles from the site, I vaguely remember hearing of the Lituya Bay tsunami, but did not know much about it.
While watching the wonderful YouTube video, one line jumped out at me. Howard Ulrich is describing the scene to the Coast Guard over the radio and says it is, "Something like the end of the world." I found this quite interesting because the opposite is actually more true. Events like these are the beginning of the world, literally. The planet itself and the many of the formations we know were caused by extreme events and cultures have stories and myths that go along with this. Other formations were caused by the more longer term geologic processes like we studied in the previous module. When you take Ulrich's line in the context of the Hawaiian Islands being caused by hot-spots, from a purely geologic perspective the world is continually being recreated or started, not ending. From the human perspective, of course, the world seems like it is ending, which is connected to the "end of days" story of many cultures as well, but that is for a different class entirely.

Having lived in Los Angeles, California, and Anchorage, Alaska, I have experienced many earthquakes, although none on the level of those studied in this module. By living in these places, however, I have been a part of a culture that accepts these events as inevitable. As you can see from the two pictures, both Anchorage and Los Angeles have frequent quakes in their general areas. Because of this we build our homes, schools, and businesses, as best we can to alleviate as much damage as possible. We practice earthquake drills and tsunami evacuations. We weigh the extra cost of earthquake insurance versus the likelihood of "the big one." The possibility of this has become part of our culture, just as the possibility of a tsunami is part of Unangan culture and volcanic events part of Hawaiian culture.

Although I have since experienced and/or studied many natural cataclysmic events, the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 is always the first one that comes to mind when the topic comes up. My mental attachment to this event is a good window into how the stories surrounding events can grab students and get them interested in the science behind their occurrences. Although I grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska, an area with it's own stories of tsunamis, as mentioned above, the Loma Prieta earthquake sticks in my mind because I remember watching it live on television. Growing up I was a baseball player and a huge baseball fan. We were allowed a very limited amount of television in my house, but baseball was an exception to this rule. Even before the earthquake, the 1989 World Series was special as it featured the Oakland A's playing the other Bay Area team, the San Fransisco Giants. The 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake's epicenter was about 60 miles from Candlestick Park, the site of the game that afternoon, and was caused by a slip along the San Andreas fault. I vividly remember watching the pre-game coverage and the earthquake happening. The game had gotten me invested in the event and the ensuing coverage began to show me the devastation that was possible, especially in a densely populated and built up region like the Bay Area.

The other story I remember related to cataclysmic events is my parents' wedding day. I know that sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but they were married on March 27, 1964, although in Berkeley, California. When we moved to Alaska it was always easier for me to remember their anniversary because the newspapers always did stories on the earthquake.

For students, there is always a connection to make, whether it is a personal experience of a cataclysmic event, a coincidental date like my parents' wedding day, or something more like a shared national experience like the World Series earthquake. For others it might be news of an event where friends or relatives live or even just a place they are interested in for other reasons. There are also cultural stories and myths of creation and destruction to use, either as an enthralling introduction in science or a cross-curricular unit with language arts and social studies. When these connections are illuminated at the front end of a geoscience unit, they can be continually used as not only as jumping off points, but constantly referenced to help students make sense of the science and to give them an opportunity to apply their new knowledge to real life situations. There are so many great tools out there for teaching the geosciences, such as satellite imagery and using the add-ons available in Google Earth. But there are also great tools out there for tying in the cultural, or human, side of these events. YouTube allows a teacher to find and screen personal stories, such as this one I found about the 1989 World Series earthquake. Additionally, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have allowed for instaneous, world-wide sharing of personal stories from these events. The wide spread use of Twitter has even spawned a cross-over project from the U.S.G.S. called Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED) that will help scientists gather information as quickly as possible about events.