A Man, His Dog and Two Earthquakes

Josh Stachnik, 25 years old, grew up in Michigan and went to school in Boston. He moved to Fairbanks in August 2002, and now works for the Alaska Earthquake Information Center, which is located on the third floor of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Fats is a smiling rottweiler/Chesapeake Bay retriever mix with one bad eye. He had been in the Fairbanks animal control shelter for three weeks when Josh visited on his lunch hour one October day. When Josh extended his hand into one of the shelter's cages, Fats walked over and licked him.

Josh returned after work and filled out the paperwork to adopt Fats. He decided to keep the name because the dog responded to it, and because "it fits him perfectly," Josh said.

Fats seemed happy in his new home. When Josh snoozed on the carpet that afternoon, Fats rested his head on Josh's shoulder. When Josh went to bed, Fats slept on the floor at the base of the loft.

At 3 a.m., Fats' whine woke Josh. He looked down to see Fats pacing around the cabin. When Josh climbed down from the loft, he heard his stove creaking, and saw his loft sway back and forth. They were experiencing the Nenana Mountain earthquake, a magnitude 6.7 in the Alaska Range, now considered a "foreshock" to the Denali Fault earthquake of November 3, 2002. There was more to come.

On November 3, Fats and Josh traveled the Denali Highway together in a Ford Excursion. Josh, with coworkers Kelly Kore and Bart MacCormack, planned to swap out hard drives in seismic stations installed after the Nenana Mountain earthquake by the Alaska Earthquake Information Center. As they rumbled along the highway, they had no idea they would soon experience the world's largest recorded earthquake in 2002.

Kore said she noticed Fats was not his normal, calm self when they stopped at a seismic station about 45 minutes before the earthquake.
" That morning he was barking and sniffing the ground excessively," Kore said. "I jokingly said to Josh and Bart that maybe we were going to have another earthquake."

At about 1:12 p.m., Josh noticed that his vehicle was "jumping." He told MacCormack to stick his head out of the window to look at the right rear tire. The tire was fine. Josh stopped the truck and he and his partners stepped out into a world in motion.

" The truck kept rocking up and down and even forward and back," Josh said. "It would've bounced away if I didn't have it in park."
At 30 miles from the peaks of the central Alaska Range, they were probably closer to the earthquake's epicenter than any other people (or dogs).

Released from the truck, Fats bolted for a patch of swaying spruce trees while the ground shook from the main shock and several aftershocks. Fats later returned with his nose to the ground.

" He definitely knew something was going on," Josh said. "His ears were all perked up and he looked confused."

Anecdotes about animals predicting earthquakes have existed for centuries, though the connection is hard to prove. Josh likes to think that Fats detected something that the humans could not.

" I think it's believable that other animals have keener senses than we do," Josh said. "People have so many artificial things between their physical body and the ground. A dog just has its pads."

Though he may never prove Fats' ability to predict earthquakes, Josh said he is sure of one thing.

" I picked the right dog."