Political Quotes

“Madam President, over the past several days we have all watched the news of the massive landslide in Washington State. We have watched that with sadness, with shock--truly an awful, awful episode. Our hearts, our prayers are certainly with all of those who have been affected by this terrible tragedy. We continue to hope for the best as rescue and recovery efforts continue. Today I have come to the floor to speak about a different natural disaster. This is a natural disaster that affected Alaska on Good Friday exactly 50 years ago today, in 1964. This is the Great Alaska Earthquake, the Good Friday Earthquake, the epic earthquake of 1964. At the time that Alaska was struck by this massive earthquake, I was a young child. I was living in the southeastern community of Wrangell, AK. I have a map here, a map of the State of Alaska. The epicenter of the earthquake is here in the south central area. About a year prior to the quake, my family and I moved down to the small southeastern community of Wrangell, tucked safely in the inland passage waterways here. We were all looking forward to Easter. When the earthquake hit, I certainly did not know that we had been struck by a massive, massive 9.2 earthquake of the magnitude on the Richter scale that decimated southcentral Alaska. The earthquake struck at 5:36 in the evening. I did not know that what had just occurred was the largest earthquake to strike the United States in recorded history.…”