This week, you might notice groups of people headed for high ground in the Bay Area. Don't worry — they'll be participating in evacuation drills as part of Tsunami Preparedness Week.
The nationwide event is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Alaska's 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, a 9.2-magnitude temblor that unleashed tsunamis that killed more than 130 people along the Alaska, Oregon and California coasts.
One of the places devastated by those quake-generated waves was Crescent City, in Del Norte County on the North Coast. Eleven people were killed there as tsunami surges destroyed the town's harbor and business districts (see video above). Although a warning had been issued, townspeople didn't evacuate — in part because nothing had happened during past alerts.
The town has taken that history to heart. The tsunami spawned by the 2011 Japan earthquake devastated the town's harbor, but no one died. And this week, Crescent City is holding a series of events to commemorate the 1963 disaster and teach a new generation of residents what to do when the next tsunami warning comes.