Tsunami Giant Tidal Waves & Sea Surges News Archive 2006

Solovev (Editor)

Olga N. Solovieva

Chan N. Go

Khen S. Kim

Nikolay A. Shchetnikov

Sergey L. Soloviev

“Eroded and fragmentary shells occur within the ‘drift’ deposits on Moel Tryfaen, a mountain in North Wales rising 1,300ft (400m) above sea level. Perplexingly the species represented include not only northern but also temperate and southern forms adapted to very varied habitats. Some required deep and others shallow water, some sandy and others muddy water, and some were peculiar to shingly and others to a bare rocky environment.

In stating that ice could never have brought together so varied a molluscan assemblage as this, it is hardly necessary to add that water could have – in which case the enveloping drift’ deposits must have been similarly water-borne.”

“While prayers and ceremonies worldwide will mark the second anniversary of the Asian tsunami on Tuesday, it has stirred up a feeling of remorse among Indian geologists.

Would the loss of lives – 12,405 Indians confirmed dead – have been much less had they conducted any detailed geological investigations of the Indian coast prior to the Boxing Day disaster?

Tsunami geologist Chittenipattu Rajendran of the government-run Centre for Earth Science Studies at Akkulam in Kerala firmly believes so.

He has reasons to. Rajendran and co-workers have just discovered that the east coast of India had been devastated twice by powerful tsunamis around 1,500 and 1,000 years ago. The ancient tsunamis churned waters at depths of 50 metres causing floods that swept through 800 metres of coast, burying the famed temples built by Pallava kings at Mamallapuram, 55 km south of Chennai.

Evidence of all this has come from sediments preserved within two deep trenches at the Mamallapuram beach site excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India after the December 2004 tsunami.

Rajendran, whose group announced this discovery last month in the journal Current Science, feels bad that such investigations were not carried out prior to the tragedy.

‘We should have stuck our neck out much before the 2004 tsunami to look at the geological archives preserved in our coasts to understand their recurrence pattern’, Rajendran told IANS in an email interview.

Rajendran’s team with funding from the science ministry is looking at Kaveripatnam, another historical site on the east coast of India, for more evidence of ancient tsunamis.

“When the east flank of Mount Etna collapsed into the sea around 8500 years ago, it triggered a tsunami that devastated the Neolithic villages of the eastern Mediterranean.

If it were to happen today the wall of water would clobber coastal cities from southern Italy to parts of Israel.

The largest active volcano in Europe, Etna towers 3.3 kilometres above eastern Sicily. When the east flank collapsed in the eruption all those years ago the resulting landslide left a depression now called Valle del Bove.

“Imagine a volcano avalanche generated tsunami 10 stories high containing enough sediment and rock to cover the entire island of Manhattan with a layer of debris thicker than the height of Empire State Building.

According to a computer simulation, that’s what happened 8,000 years ago in Sicily when Mt. Etna erupted and produced an avalanche that hurled six cubic miles of dirt and rock into the water, creating a tsunami that spread across the entire Mediterranean Sea and onto the shore of three continents in only a few hours.

The mountain of rubble swept into the sea at more than 200 mph, pulverized the sea bed and changed thick layers of soft marine sediment into jelly. It also started an underwater mudslide that flowed for hundreds of miles.

Underwater geoarchaeological excavations on the shallow shelf
(10 m depth) at Caesarea, Israel, have documented a tsunami that struck and damaged the ancient harbor at Caesarea. Talmudic sources record a tsunami that struck on 13 December A.D. 115, impacting Caesarea and Yavne.

The tsunami was probably triggered by an earthquake that destroyed Antioch, and was generated somewhere on the Cyprian Arc fault system. The tsunami deposit consisted of an 0.5-m-thick bed of reverse-graded shells, coarse sand, pebbles, and pottery deposited over a large area outside of the harbor.

Italian scientists say geological evidence suggests a giant tsunami resulted from the collapse of the eastern flanks of Mount Etna nearly 8,000 years ago.

The collapse of the volcano, located on Italy’s island of Sicily, was studied by Maria Teresa Pareschi and colleagues at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.

They modeled the collapse and discovered the volume of landslide material, combined with the force of the debris avalanche, would have generated a catastrophic tsunami, impacting the entire Eastern Mediterranean.

State and city officials are trying to determine the source of an earthquake and tsunami hoax on Sunday that sent hundreds of people to higher ground and tied up emergency communication lines for hours.

Civil defense, police, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and media were inundated Sunday with more than 800 calls from people trying to verify rumors that predicted a Big Island earthquake that would cause a major tsunami, supposedly due to hit the Islands Sunday night.

“At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high.

On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction – toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface..

The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land.

Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described ‘band of misfits’ that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say that astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence of such impacts along the world’s shorelines and in the deep ocean.

Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion.

“A giant underwater landslide that gouged the bottom of Lake Tahoe thousands of years ago sent a tsunami coursing across the lake and left huge ripples of rock that remain today, geologists have discovered.

Three scuba divers, a robot submarine from Santa Clara University and teams from the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Nevada in Reno combined forces to piece the story together from evidence they gathered during two years spent surveying what lies beneath the lake’s storied blue waters just offshore from Tahoe City (Placer County).

“A $245 million stretch of blacktop intended to be the signature goodwill gesture from the American people to survivors of the 2004 tsunami has instead become a parable of the problems of Aceh’s recovery effort.

Construction of the 240 kilometer, or 150-mile, road along the devastated coast has yet to start, stalled by a host of obstacles like acquiring right of way through residential and farmland. Though villagers welcome the idea, some have reservations about an American-style thoroughfare with a wide shoulder on either side.

“Once, they were regarded as maritime myth and legend. Freak waves that rose 30m from the ocean and snapped ships in half were given as much credence by scientists as the existence of mermaids.

Now it seems the fantastic accounts by sailors through the ages might have been more than just tales of the deep. Research suggests up to 10 gigantic ‘rogue waves’ – some as tall as a 10-storey building – are likely to be crashing through the world’s oceans at any given moment.

The tsunami was triggered by a magnitude 7.7 undersea earthquake which shook buildings in the capital, Jakarta, some 270km (170 miles) away.

“An earthquake struck south of Indonesia’s Java island, triggering a tsunami and killing at least five people, said Indonesian President Susilo Bam-bang Yudhoyono in Jakarta yesterday.

The 7.2 magnitude quake occurred beneath the sea about 260km south of Bandung, Java, at 3.19pm local time, says a preliminary report on the US Geological Survey website. There was a 6.1 magnitude aftershock.

The site is located at Eriksdal, in the southernmost province of Sweden, Skåne. Scandinavia and the Baltic formed a continent 145 million years ago, around the Jurassic-Cretaceous transition.

‘Search teams are still working as we speak’‘ Yudhoyono said. ‘The local government has started to evacuate people.’

Indonesia was the country worst hit by the December 26 2004 tsunami that devastated coastal communities around the Indian Ocean, killing more than 200000 people from Indonesia and Thailand to the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Somalia and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

Traces of this ancient tsunami are still left and these have been discovered by the geologists Vivi Vajda and Jane Wigforss-Lange at Lund University. The scientific results will soon be published in the journal Progress in Natural Science.

The site is located at Eriksdal, in the southernmost province of Sweden, Skåne. Scandinavia and the Baltic formed a continent 145 million years ago, around the Jurassic-Cretaceous transition.

The coast line cut through Skåne and the area around Eriksdal was a delta environment. At this time Sweden was situated at the same latitude as the Mediterranean of today and the climate was globally warm, not even the poles were ice capped.

In Scandinavia tree ferns, gingkoes and cycads were thriving and the fauna was dominated by dinosaurs. The coast was inhabited by sharks, crocodiles and tetrapods (now extinct giant amphibians).

Scientists at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) say they recorded signals of increased activity around 6am, Saturday morning.

Expecting that this dome collapse episode could go on for hours, the biggest concern was the possibility of explosive periods triggering pyroclastic flows into Tyres Ghaut, which is the upper reaches leading into the Belham River Valley.

The MVO’s scientist also said that another concern was the threat of tsunamis from the continuing pyroclastic flows of this eruptive event entering the sea.

The official coastal warning states, ‘Following a collapse of the dome at the Soufriére Hills Volcano in Montserrat in the early hours of Saturday, 20 May 2006, it has been reported that a tsunami has affected some coastal areas of Guadeloupe. There are unconfirmed reports that English Harbour and Jolly Harbour in Antigua have been affected.’

Geoscience Australia seismologist David Jepson said the earthquake measured 8.0 on the Richter scale, and was regarded as a very significant event.

But is was 100 times smaller than the December 2004 magnitude 9.3 earthquake in the Indian Ocean off Sumatra which produced the devastating Boxing Day Tsunami.

Dr Jepson said initiating a tsunami alert through the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre was a prudent precaution.

‘It is easier to cancel a warning than for people to be drowned’, Dr Jepson said. ‘Shallow earthquakes of this size can be very destructive and can cause serious damage up to 500 kilometres from the epicentre.’

‘There are different trigger points for saying whether it could be a Pacific wide tsunami or just a local tsunami and this fitted in with the size of a Pacific wide tsunami’

They said that studies have shown that unexplained landslides in the Gulf of Mexico between 5000 and 10000 years ago created waves more than 15 metres high that smashed into the coast of Texas. And before that, a slump near the Mississippi Delta caused a wave probably at least twice as big to hit shore.

They said that the usual suspect might be earthquakes, but the Gulf of Mexico was not seismically active, so the most probable reason for the tsunamis was ancient hurricanes.

Geologists Bill Burton and David Weary, in an interview with the Saipan Tribune, pointed to the geological map showing the presence at a certain portion of the island of what they called ‘storm surge deposits’.

Burton and Weary explained that the idea was that large waves crashed over an area on the island and left typically broken pieces of coral reefs.

Wildlife experts estimate that there are less than five leatherback turtles left in an area that once teemed with them, while hawksbill and olive ridley turtles each number less than 100.

One of the most important spawning sites for the four main species of Andaman Sea turtles that are critically endangered is the island of Phang Nga. As one of the worst-hit areas in the tsunami disaster, local authorities have now built a 2.5-kilometre-long and one-metre-high concrete wall to try to minimise the effects of any future sea disasters.

The confusion shows the poor coordination and lack of modern tsunami detection technology in Indonesia more than 14 months after its western shorelines were ravaged by the 2004 Asian tsunami, killing more than 130,000 people.

Tuesday’s 6.8-magnitude quake was 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Buru Island in the east of the sprawling country.

“The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of Dec. 26, 2004, was one of the worst natural disasters in history, largely because of the devastating tsunami that followed.

Now, scientists have discovered that regions of the earth previously thought to be immune to such events may actually be at high risk of experiencing them.

‘This earthquake didn’t just break all the records, it also broke some of the rules’, says scientist Kerry Sieh of Caltech, an author of the report.

When major disaster strikes, the capacity of the local Red Cross and Red Crescent society to provide assistance is often stretched to breaking point. When this happens, sister national societies, the International Federation and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are often asked to provide help.

The earthquake and tsunamis of 26 December 2004 were unquestionably among the most calamitous natural disasters in living memory, outstripping local national societies’ ability to meet the needs of vulnerable people.

From around the world, Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, the International Federation and ICRC sprang into action. More than 20 national societies established direct operations in tsunami-affected countries and almost 100 – an unprecedented number – raised funds to help survivors rebuild their lives.

This massive influx of expertise, material and financial aid provided challenges in the operational arena – in some 10 different countries with varying humanitarian requirements and sometimes unstable political environments.

What is most important is that resources are best utilized to avoid gaps, duplications and culturally inappropriate aid delivery.

But before we get to the present, a bit of history is quite in order.

There is a vivid description in the Mausalaparvan of the Mahabaratha about the submergence of Dwaraka. The people of Dwaraka including Arjuna seemed to have witnessed strange things before its submergence in the sea.

‘The event was preceded by the unabated rumbling noise of the earth throughout the day and night, birds screamed continuously, and heavy winds swept the land. The sea, which has been beating against the shores, suddenly broke the boundary that was imposed on it by nature. Huge tide with great height surrounded Dwaraka. The sea rushed into the city submerging beautiful buildings. The sea covered up everything and in a matter of few moments, there was no trace of the beautiful city.’

It was something of an ancient tsunami.

And now the scientists at NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology, of the Department of Ocean Development) have established this. While working for British gas in the Gulf of Cambay region, a few years ago, the scientists of the NIOT, were stunned to see images of objects and things, completely alien to the marine domain. Immediately a team swung into action and samples were collected and sent for analysis and dating (it is usually done to scientifically establish the antiquity of the excavated objects).

“When the Dec 26, 2004 tsunami wiped out his village and submerged his crop land in Choldhari in India’s southern Andamans, Jogen Mondal felt all was lost.

But several months of heavy rains drained out the saline water from his fields and the cultivator from then-East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) proudly says that his paddy field proves a point.

He says the Andaman Chief Secretary DS Negi took their advice more seriously than that of the agriculture experts.

Some of the settler-farmers of the south Andaman have grown a good crop this season.

“When news of a big earthquake hits in the middle of the night, it takes geophysicist Bruce Turner five minutes to fumble for his beeper, throw on a coat, scrape ice off his car windshield, drive a mile to work and transmit a tsunami alert from the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.

These few minutes, essential to communities in a tsunami’s path, will no longer be wasted on commuting when the center goes to round-the-clock staffing in April.

A portion of $24 million appropriated by Congress in May to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will allow 24-hour staffing, seven days a week at the nation’s two tsunami warning centers, here and at Ewa Beach, Hawaii.

The Red Cross had its biggest ever response to the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami with New Zealanders giving more than $22 million to its appeal. Of that, $13.5 million was given directly to the Red Cross and $8.3 million was provided by the Government.

Some news media last month raised questions about the spending of tsunami aid, with one newspaper saying less than half of donations by New Zealanders had been spent as hundreds of victims continued to live in rotten tents and shacks.

This an opportunity to focus on what has been done in the past 12 months with regard to reconstruction projects and humanitarian efforts in the tsunami-hit region. It is also an opportunity to shed light on the lessons learned from the disaster.

The world responded to the catastrophe with unprecedented generosity, pledging more than $10.5 billion, $7 billion of which has so far been handed over according to the United Nations office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. Thus, there was enough supply of aid and funds that could pay for everything. The problem, however, was how to make the best use of the money.

Those few minutes will no longer be wasted on commuting when the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center goes to round-the-clock staffing in April.

Already more than 10 houses have been washed away by the high tide while property worth over one million naira have been destroyed as a result of breaches in three sections of the foreshore wall.

‘It’s in some ways very hopeful, but even a year afterward, it really shows that there’s more to be done,’ said Mike Sarna, director of exhibits at The Notebaert Nature Museum.