The 1964 Earthquake took a total of 114 lives, some as far as California. The motion of the ground was so powerful it snapped the tops of some trees. Some landslides that are caused by earthquakes are more destructive than the shocks themselves In this earthquake a landslide damaged a lot of the Turnagain area, and some of the downtown.

In Anchorage nine people died, and in less than five minutes, 2,000 people became homeless. Anchorage had fewer deaths than the small coastal towns, because many of the people in the coastal towns died from tsunamis. The estimated damage of the earthquake to Alaska came out to be about $537,600,000. The school system had an estimate of about $3,860,000 of damage. A new five-story J.C.Penney store was damaged so severely that it was beyond repair and it had to be torn down. There was also $15,000,000 of damage to all of the utilities. Kodiak had an estimate of about $45,000,000 of property damage.