Political Quotes

“Mr. President, Senator Sullivan and I have just returned to Washington after an almost surreal 24-hour period up in the State. We went up on Sunday night, Monday morning. We hadn't anticipated being there, but the State of Alaska--and more specifically Southcentral Alaska--experienced a powerful earthquake on Friday. It was certainly an unsettling event, a frightening event to many, and it caused significant damage in the most populated part of our State. Last Friday, at 8:29 in the morning, we had an earthquake that struck the community of Anchorage with a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was about 7 miles north of Anchorage. It was about 25 miles deep. That shock lasted anywhere, folks were saying, from about 40 seconds to 1 minute; that was the initial hard jolt. Then, movement after that depended on where you were and what kind of ground you were located on, but it was a very significant earthquake by all standards. I heard about the earthquake, not because I got an alert on my phone but because my phone rang when my son called. He lives and works in Anchorage. He had been at his shop, and he called me right after the shaking stopped. My son is a pretty calm young man, but I could tell that something was wrong, something was different. I could hear it in his voice. He was clearly rattled. His comments to me reflected so many of the comments I have heard from so many with whom I have had a chance to visit.…”