Tsunami Threat...known for 10 years

[Norske3]

Cause: A huge rock twice the size of "Isle of Man" falling from a volcano in Canary Isles. :eek: :eek: :eek: web page (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=549820)

[ 08-10-2004, 09:27 AM: Message edited by: Norske3 ]

[Ian McColgin]

Yep. That would about wipe out life along the Atlantic and produce interesting events in the Pacific. Perhaps the most interesting events would be across the Arctic as that energy travels under ice.

Another arguement for life in the Pelagic Village.

[paladin]

as...dad..says...just like Krakatoa....
Sonja...Paladins daughter...I've been reading the forum to dad.....

[Domesticated_Mr. Know It All]

Tell him Hello for me and I hope he's doing better. ;)

[TimH]

And California will slide into the sea. Human life has a greater chance of wiping out its own ecosystem within 100 years than that happening. :rolleyes:

[Smacksman]

Wow TimH, I didn't know that California now stretches over to the Eastern Seaboard.

Maybe its all the holiday makers in Florida making the US tilt!

When it happens, jump in your boats and head for the continental shelf and you should ride it out. Mind you, the marina won't be there when you get back.

[NormMessinger]

Ah, Sonja. Glad you are there. A lot of us here are looking after your dad but it can't be the same as being there in person.

[Ken Hutchins]

Ah, the bennefit, if I time it right I can launch my boat right here at 700 ft elevation, then ride the water the 30 miles to the ocean. :D Probably won't have a problem finding mooring space either. :D

[Jack Heinlen]

Hm, fifteen miles from the mouth of the Penobscot, and at perhaps 400 ft. above sea level, I'd probably be fish food.

Don't tsunami travel at hundreds of mile an hour? So if you're going to get out beyond the continental shelf you better be on the boat, ready to go to sea, and get the warning right away.

[John Bell]

Maybe I'm being cynical, but it sounds like the scientists are using a bit of hyperbole to get their grant approved.


Professor McGuire said close monitoring might at best provide two weeks warning of the disaster but that despite knowing about the danger for a decade, no one was keeping a proper watch on the mountain.

The two or three seismographs left to pick up signs of movement in the rock were not capable of detecting a looming eruption weeks in advance, Professor McGuire warned.

"What we need now is an integrated volcanic monitoring set up to give maximum warning of a coming eruption. The US government must be aware of the La Palma threat. They should certainly be worried, and so should the island states in the Caribbean that will really bear the brunt of a collapse.

"They're not taking it seriously. Governments change every four to five years and generally they're not interested in these things," he added.

A monitoring station equip-ped to look deep into the heart of the mountain and spot the early signs of an eruption might cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. In comparison, the US was spending $4m (£2.2m) a year scouring the skies for kilometre-sized asteroids which were much less of a threat, Professor McGuire said. He seems to be saying "Fund me! Not those silly asteroid guys! They're a bunch of geeks anyway..."

[John Meachen]

I share the reaction that the thrust of the article is to help secure funding for a research project.Beyond that,I would have thought that on this forum we might have a few people knowledgeable enough about the displacement of water by moving objects-the chunk of rock,and about wave propogation to give a much better assessment.

[Hwyl]

Here's much of the same information presented in a less harrowing manner by Aunty BBC in 2000. It mentions that there would have to be a number of eruptions for this to happen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/956280.stm

[Norske3]

Perhaps all forumites on the East Coast of USA should build/buy a decked over..sealed lifeboat...and stored in your driveway.
web page (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/10/1092102456037.html?oneclick=true)

[TimH]

Tsunamis happen all the time it looks like. We are all Doomed! :eek:

[NormMessinger]

As Joe might say, locations location location.

Mt Rainier will soon take out Seattle, an earth quake Kailiefornia, and now a sunami the whole eastern seaboard. And no ya can't all come live with me.

[Chris Stewart]

And no ya can't all come live with me.

Come live with you? In tornado country?

[Matt J.]

And with the Oogalala aquifer drying up? And all those Mississippi floods?

No thanks, Norm. But you and Phyllis are welcome at our house anytime. ;)

[dmede]

This kind of major island colapse happens all the time in Hawaii (geologically speaking). All of the major Hawaiian islands (and I'm sure most of the minor ones as well - all 1500) shows signs of huge underwater landslides capable of producing very large tsunamis.

Some of the slides may have been catastophically large. Molokai has the apperance of an island that has snapped in two. The north rim of the island is a sheer vertical drop of 2000' (tallest sea cliffs in the world). On the sea floor below it is the remains of a massive land slide (the other half of the island). Hawaii (the Big Island) has a slab on it's south east end that is slowly slipping off the island and will eventully become so unstable it will crack off and slide into the ocean all at once. Love to be in a helicopter to see that one!

http://starbulletin.com/1999/05/05/millennium/storya2.html

[TimH]

[QUOTE Hawaii (the Big Island) has a slab on it's south east end that is slowly slipping off the island and will eventully become so unstable it will crack off and slide into the ocean all at once. Love to be in a helicopter to see that one![/QUOTE]

or a surfboard! :D

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as
effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
on some idle Tuesday.

-Boz Luhrman

[Norske3]

Well,if its a really big one,Omaha, Nebrasky might end up with a seacoast....Norm can sell the trailor/get a mouring...and then worry about all those tornadoes becoming waterspouts! :D

[Wild Wassa]

It always happens over there, why can't it happen over here? ... I'm sick of driving 90k's to get to the coast.

This smacks of another scientist looking for grant money?

Australia used to have a good asteroid watch programme. That's now been folded because the money is now needed for the war effort and to save us from Saddam's WOMD.

Warren.

[Norske3]

http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=1621&CategoryID=5 web page (http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=1621&CategoryID=5)

[ 08-18-2004, 07:21 AM: Message edited by: Norske3 ]

[BrianW]

A quote from the BBC link above...


The largest wave in recorded history, witnessed in Alaska in 1958, was caused by the collapse of a towering cliff at Letuya Bay.I'll be flying by Lituya Bay (note: it's spelled with an 'I' on the chart) tomorrow, I'll try to get a couple pictures. I already have some, but there on an old computer no longer connected to the 'net.

[TimH]

http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/alaska/1958/photosmaps/lituyabayweb_3.gif
The landslide occurred along the rock face located to the immediate upper right of the Lituya Glacier (large glacier in top right of photo). This photo also provides a good view of the splash mark on the point at the entrance to Gilbert Inlet (located at the terminus of Lituya Glacier).

The mass of rock striking the surface of the bay created a giant splash, which sent water surging to a height of 1720 feet across the point opposite the inlet. This initial sheet of water stripped all vegetation from the point, leaving a bare rock face. The in addition to this initial splash, the rock slide also sent a giant local tsunami sweeping across the bay. Eyewitness accounts from the few unfortunate boaters who happened to be anchored in the bay for night, state that the wave was at least 100 feet tall at its maximum . :eek:

http://www.extremescience.com/images/Highwatermark.gif
high water mark 1720 feet up from sea level.

This is interesting stuff.
smile.gif
July 10, 1958 Southeastern Alaska Tsunami - Lituya Bay Narrative

Passage from Roberts (1961):

"...Still farther south, mountain-girt Lituya Bay lay near the foot of 15,320-foot Mount Fairweather itself. Inside LaChausee Spit at the bay entrance were two boats, the Badger, aboard which Bill and Vivian Swanson, of Auburn, Wash., lay asleep, and the Sunmore, occupied by Orville Wagner, of Idaho Inlet, and his young wife Mickey. Farther in, near Lituya's south shore, were Howard Uhlrich and his 7-year-old son Junior, in the 38-foot Edrie. Just in from a day of fishing, they all sought a night's shelter before undertaking another day of labor in the Alaskan Gulf.

...The Swansons and the Uhlrichs in Lituya Bay rose in alarm to gaze in unbelieving wonder and terror. Swanson and his wife later insisted that the terminal ice mass of Lituya Glacier rose into view from behind a headland up the bay, with great masses falling from its face, and then fell majestically into the water, creating a wave that went over the whole headland. It then caromed down the bay, scouring the shores of their trees, obliterating the mountaineer's campsite, overrunning Cenotaph Island and its lone cabin, and killing the Wagners and all but killing the Swansons in a surfboard kind of plunge of their two boats across 40-foot high LaChausee Spit to destruction in the sea outside - a wave of such improbability as to strain the credulity of later investigators, and to remain a scientific puzzle.

...Eyewitness stories of the Lituya Bay events come from the Swansons and from Howard Uhlrich. Bill and Vivian Swanson, occupants of the Badger during her mad flight across LaChausee Spit in company with the ill-fated Wagners, somehow managed to get clear of the wreck in an 8-foot punt, undergoing exposure and fright as well as loss of their worldly possessions, before their rescue by a fisherman named Graham in the trawler Luman. They were quickly flown to Juneau in a rescue plane and, after a short hospital rest, were able to describe their experience. They were sure they had seen the glacier riding high into sight from behind the western mountain, followed by a great wave of water washing over its steep face. During the following wild ride across the spit they believed they were 100 feet high, for there had been trees on the spit, and they were above them. They looked down on rocks as big as houses. They were incredulous and deeply thankful to be alive.

The story told by the other survivors, Howard Uhlrich and his son, will probably be unmatched for a long time to come. In a vivid account published in the Alaska Sportsman Uhlrich tells how they enetered the bay on the last of the floodtide for rest after a day of poor fishing. He anchored Edrie in a cove on the south side a mile or so inside the entrance, and after supper he and Sonny went to sleep, only to be awakened by violent motions soon after 10:15. Dashing to the deck, Uhlrich beheld the writhing and twisting of the high peaks and the clouds of dust and flying snow about their summits. Petrified, he watched for 2 minutes or more until his attention was attracted to a new sight. There was a gigantic wall of water which he thought to be 1800 feet high erupting against the western mountain, then coming down the bay, cutting a swath through the trees on the summit of Cenotaph Island, backlashing against the eastern shore up to a height of 500 feet, then heading for the Edrie, now a wall of water 50 feet high.

Suddenly he realized he had to move. Cursing himself for delaying, he got a life jacket on Sonny, then somehow got the engine going, but he was unable to heave the anchor in time. Just before the water struck he veered the chain to its end, hoping to slip it, at the same time maneuvering the Edrie to face the wave. As she lifted to the swell the chain tightened and snapped, its short end whipping up and winding around the pilothouse. The boat was swept, completely out of control over what had been dry land a moment before. By now Uhlrich remembered his radio. Shouting into it, he made the international voice-radio distress call, "Mayday, Mayday - Edrie in Lituya Bay - all hell broke loose - I think we've had it - goodby!" The wave, however, changed course and bounced off the shore, allowing Uhlrich, with strenuous efforts and certainly with superb seamanship, to get his boat under a kind of control. He now began devoting himself to evading huge chunks of churning ice, any one of which could have made kindling wood of the Edrie."

[ 08-19-2004, 04:35 AM: Message edited by: TimH ]

[PeterSibley]

The tsunami story has appeared here in Australia .....the presentation wasn't quite as sensational as the above links though.The situation seems real enough, in fact the reporter said that the tsunami event is 100% certain....it just a matter of when . The cost of monitoring is measely by comparison with the amounts spent on monitoring various military or terrorist threats.It seems that any Government would rationally evaluate the situation and act on the result ?

[TimH]

maybe the governments philosophy is "some things are better off not known" ;)

[PeterSibley]

That would be a hard one to justify Tim....the results could look like WW3.. :(

[TimH]

I would think the wave would dissipate before it got here anyway. Thats a big ocean. :rolleyes:

[PeterSibley]

Mate ...thats not the way Tsunamis work.They don't travel as a wave but rather as a pulse or shock wave in the ocean.Not as a wave ...as they approach shallow water they build into a wave form .As I understand it you could sail through a tsunami in the deep ocean and not notice it .....as it approachs a continental shelf however it starts to build...and build.They are VERY serious stuff.

[Dave Gray]

Exactly right. The Oregon coast has tsunami sirens so people can panic before they get wiped out - er, to make it to high ground before the wall of water hits.

Our coast has a number of subduction zones. The last big quake, which they estimate to be at 10 or so, happened in the 1700's. Historical records report a large tsunami hitting Japan around this time (radiocarbon dating being done on petrified logs). A couple of years ago, a very minus tide revealed stumps on some beaches; these were attributed to the event in 1700.

Not to worry. These only happen once every 300 to 400 years....

[Jim H]

Originally posted by PeterSibley:
It seems that any Government would rationally evaluate the situation and act on the result ?I'm just guessing but it looks like you'd have about 6 hours warning, so an alert would help. NYC, Boston and cities of that size would be toast, the roads would be clogged with evacuees.

[TimH]

This island is covered with tsunami evacuation route signs.