What I want to know is this: Did the city of Anchorage allow people to build homes on that Bootlegger's mud beside Earthquake Park? (You know, where the first subdivision sank during the Big One.)
They probably did through the process of neglect. Alaska was new to statehood and the planning and zoning process was in its infancy. There was probably just the Planning Commission and somebody to take minutes, and nobody else cared enough to come to meetings and say--what if we get a big earthquake?
Lots of houses around there
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=61.202457,-149.938488&spn=0.016379,0.053816&t=h&hl=en