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When Debra Taylor heard that a tsunami had hit Japan on March 11 and was traveling toward her hometown of Crescent City, Calif., at a speed of 500 miles per hour, she was riveted to CNN until one in the morning. More than 20 of her close relatives, including her 94-year-old grandmother, live in Crescent City in northern California, which was devastated by a tsunami in 1964, following a volcanic eruption in Alaska.
Taylor, 54, who now resides in Las Cruces, witnessed that disaster, and was on the phone with her relatives even before the surge battered the harbor on Saturday. According to The Associated Press, much of the harbor was destroyed and four people were swept out to sea: three were hurt, and one person was missing and feared dead.
Through her aunt, Wanda Hanson, Taylor learned that her grandmother said she was "not too worried" about the approaching tsunami. When she found out the waves were expected to be 8 feet high, she knew it would not be as bad as 1964, when the waves reached 50 to 100 feet high, and 11 people lost their lives.
Taylor first talked to another aunt, Dolores Craig, early in the morning before the tsunami hit. Craig was watching the water churn and rise in the harbor, she said.
Later in the day, Taylor talked to Hanson, who told her, "The harbor is gone." There was a big park on what Taylor called "Front Beach" and Hanson said the water took that out, along with several memorials to fishermen who had died.
Taylor said that the structure
"We all knew there was a problem with that," she said. "I don't know why they did that. It just sucks water into the harbor."
However, the night before, while watching CNN, it seemed to Taylor that the waves might be much higher than 8 feet, and she also feared that Crescent City might be hit with an earthquake and catastrophic flooding - a disaster like the one she witnessed in 1964 at the age of 8.
She and her family went downtown after flooding had ravaged the city. Her grandmother, Wyana Rustin, had a clothing store there. It was covered in knee-deep mud, Taylor said.
And there was a car perched on top of her desk. It had come in through the back of the store and was twisted to one side.
"It was amazing to see the destruction," she said. "My whole world came crashing down around me."
Concrete pillars, three feet around, had been knocked off their pedestals, she said.
A crude oil tanker had exploded, and the shock of it shook walls all over Crescent City, she said.
The strangest sight of all for Taylor, even stranger than the car on top of her grandmother's desk, was a liquor store where bottles were strewn about, still corked, with little fish swimming inside them.
As best as young Taylor could figure out, the corks must have popped out, letting the fish in, and then the corks were sucked back in.
Taylor said her grandparents on both sides of the family settled in Crescent City in the 1930s. Her father, a logger, and mother grew up there, she said, and she was born and raised there. Later, Taylor joined the U.S. Air Force and spent 11 years stationed at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo. She and her husband of 35 years, Wade Taylor, attempted to live in Wisconsin, she said, but came back to Las Cruces in 2007.
Next week, she said, she will be going to Crescent City. She had planned the trip before the disaster. Her mother, who has Alzheimer's disease, is in Oregon, she said, and she will also be visiting her grandmother.
"I have to see her," she said.
Fortunately, she said, her family has always lived on high ground. "We are not dumb," she said with a laugh.
Jeff Barnet can be reached at (575) 541-5476
