Well, I suppose you want to know where I was when this disaster took place.

I was driving on my way home.

And I began to feel that the car I had just purchased was a lemon because the wheels

appeared to be running off the car.

I managed to stop the car and I looked in a stoop of action at the road about 10 feet

ahead of me and saw the road break open.

And then, like two big halves of a huge sandwich, start moving like scissors back and forth,

one half moving in one direction, the other half moving in the other direction.

And all the time while watching the road, it suddenly dawned on me that this was not

an ordinary disaster, that it was perhaps one of the greatest disasters to hit North America.

I kept thinking, what will Alaskans do now?

There are moments when the world we take for granted instantaneously changes.

When reality is abruptly upended and the unimaginable overwhelms real life, we don't walk around

thinking about that instability, but we know it's always there.

At random and without warning, a kind of terrible magic can switch on and scramble our lives.

You may know the feeling.

In 1964, it happened to Anchorage, Alaska, and to a woman named Jeannie Chance.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro.

This is the Daily.

Today, the Great Alaska earthquake was the biggest earthquake to ever hit North America.

John Mollell, author of the book, This Is Chance on the story of that disaster and the

voice that held the state together.

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