 It came without warning, as most disasters do. In the Gulf of Alaska, all the fishing trawlers were heading home, tying up for a long Easter weekend. In Valdez, the freighter China had just come in. First, visit of spring, and all the kids flocked down to the dock, knowing the deckhand would line the rail and toss the fruit and candy. And Fred Neumeer, one of the crewmen, unlimited his 8mm movie camera to take these pictures. For the youngsters, the day wore a happy face. Until suddenly at 5.36, the earth trembled, began to shake. In the Gulf of Alaska, the ocean bottom plunged, then heaved upward a full 50 feet, and a wave started racing for shore. It smashed into Valdez, tossed the China high in the sky, then drove the ship into the heart of town. Fred Neumeer grabbed a deck stanchion, held on for dear life, and kept his camera running. No one caught on the pier survived, the longshoremen, the kids, or their daughters. The seismic wave roared on into Kodiak Harbor, turning the town into a whirlpool of boats and buildings. At Seward, it exploded the gas tanks, sending the people racing for their lives, as a wall of fire and water swept through the town. In Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, the quake ripped directly through the downtown district. The clocks have stopped at 5.36. And so has everything else. Alaska's been hit by a natural force equal to 10 million atomic bombs of the size that leveled Hiroshima. The greatest shock to hit this continent within the 20th century. The whole side of the street has dropped a dozen feet. A turn again by the sea, the fashionable suburb just southwest of the town, the whole bluff has skidded, collapsed out toward the bay, and 150 homes have gone with it. 50,000 square miles have been ripped and torn by the quake. The Alaskan railroad looked like this after shock and fire and six tidal waves. In one smashing blow, 115 lives have been lost. Damage has exceeded half a billion. Whole cities lie helpless without power, heat, light, or water. But already Alaskans are rallying. State and local officials, public welfare workers, hundreds of volunteers. Governor Egan sets up his emergency command post at State Civil Defense in Anchorage. And all relief operations, civilian, military, governmental, are coordinated here. On the local level, too, men like Douglas Clure, the Anchorage Civil Defense Director, are working desperately to meet a hundred pressing problems, organizing rescue teams to search the ruins, the evacuation of victims, establishing emergency communications, restoring essential utilities. Thousands are homeless in immediate need of welfare services, of food and clothing in emergency shelter. But public welfare, Red Cross and Salvation Army, civic and church groups, all combine to meet the need. The military is helping, too. Alaska Command has detailed thousands of troops to aid in civilian rescue operations. Army water tanks are rolling out to relieve a desperate shortage. Military field kitchens are there to feed the hungry, the homeless, the thousands of volunteer rescue workers. And planes are streaming in from the lower 48. The presidents declared Alaska a major disaster area, ordered the armed forces in all departments of the federal government to render maximum assistance, and a huge airlift is underway. Federal assistance will ultimately run to more than $350 million. And in the first two weeks alone, military planes will bring in more than a million and a half pounds of emergency supplies, food, clothing, auxiliary generators, water drums and sanitation kits from fallout shelter stocks in Seattle, irrigation pipe from civil defense reserve stocks, and typhoid serum to fight the danger of epidemics. The face of disaster, an Alaskan face. But disaster can knock at any door, and all too often does. There were more than 36 tornadoes in 1950 and 65 floods. In 1952, over 48 floods, 26 tornadoes with 254 killed and over 2,000 injured. Along the gulf and on the eastern coast, disaster can wear the hurricanes face. There were over 24 hurricanes in 1955. Any year in the cities, fire and explosion. On a single spring day, Palm Sunday, 1965, 37 tornadoes boiled through the Middle West, leveling scores of communities and killing 242 people. More than twice the toll of the great Alaskan quake. In the same week, floods in Minnesota were driving 23,000 from their homes and multiplying the toll day by day as they rolled on down the Mississippi. In these United States, we suffered more than 12,000 disasters a year, large or small, natural or man-made, and live in the shadow of an even greater danger, the chance of nuclear disaster. No community, Seattle, Toledo, Davenport or Anchorage, Alaska, can count itself safe or escape the need to be ready. Ready to protect life and help the victims. To give shelter in time of emergency. To provide food and clothing. Ready to locate the homeless and reunite families. To provide the needed social services. To conduct emergency operations until the community's life can be restored to normal. None of it happens without preparation and previous plan. Without coordination and complete cooperation between government at every level and all the community's welfare services. The public welfare departments. Civil defense. Red Cross. Salvation Army. The voluntary agencies and trained volunteers. All united to meet the community's needs whenever disaster strikes. And when that happens. But only then disaster will wear a different face.