The Great Alaska Earthquake

No San Antonio radio station was better known for its news department than KONO. The innovative Big Red Mobile units equipped with police scanners and two-way radio communication were the most visible signs of a first class operation.

The newsroom not only contained the usual teletype equipment, but was also jammed with all the latest news gathering and emergency equipment as well as special telephone lines to police and fire departments. Nothing was overlooked in the news department budget. Of course, there was also that most important item--a newsman on duty 24/7.

Ironically, I was fired in 1960 from my very first weekend news gig at KONO. Four years later I was on the air at KONO again, but not in the news department.

I was about to depart for home, after my usual evening disc jockey air shift. I saw a lot of activity in the newsroom, so I stuck my head in the door out of curiosity. At exactly 12:36:14 in the early morning hours of March 27, 1964, I became a newsman again.

Tom Ellis, the newsman on duty, asked me to grab a phone and call Alaska because he was unable to get through due to the second largest (9.5) earthquake in the world and the largest (9.2) earthquake ever recorded in the northern hemisphere.

It was just Tom and me attempting to gather all the available facts and placing them on the air as quickly as possible.

After repeated attempts to contact our radio counterpart in Anchorage (about 120 km from the epicenter) on the phone, I finally got a response.

Now I know why news people do what they do. The adrenalin rush I felt while getting the story was surpassed only by the first time I ever spoke into a live radio microphone at KBOP in Pleasanton, TX.

I still have the tape of the phone conversation about the death and destruction that stretched between Valdez and Anchorage.

Skinny

Skinny Don Green

[ Home ]