When Nature's Wrath Is History's Reminder

[Simply Joel]

I am compelled to share this editorial due to recent seismic activity.

December 28, 2004
When Nature's Wrath Is History's Reminder
By DENNIS SMITH

SCIENTISTS, like art teachers who have not mastered anatomy or drawing, often assume that what they do not know is not important. And, when it comes to earth science, what they do not know is the pattern of geologic time, particularly what has happened beneath the ground in the 4.5 billion years that we assume the earth has existed. What have been the consequences of large waves and water movement to whatever life existed on its surface?

Humans might know that the universe is theorized to be 15 billion years old, or that the Milky Way was formed 13 billion years ago, but the way we feel about ourselves in relation to a 4.5 billion-year-old earth is not much different from the way indigenous people studying a night sky might have felt about themselves anywhere on earth 10,000 years ago. The subject of what can possibly happen on earth is simply too big for most of us to handle if we are to continue to be an optimistic race. And so we hope for the best.

Yet there are some things we should be thinking about in a more serious manner. There are facts that we should not let pass into an obscure scientific history, for remembering them will undoubtedly help ensure a safer future for all on our planet. This is harder than it sounds.

We have a tsunami warning system in the Pacific Ocean because, in recent history, we've experienced tsunamis there. We don't have a similar system in the Indian Ocean. This has something to do with the technologies developing nations can afford, of course, But it also has to do with the fact that our experience with the giant waves in this region is less immediate. Yet the single worst explosion in our known geologic history - an eruption of a 20-by-60-mile caldera some 71,000 years ago - occurred on Sumatra, just 100 miles from the epicenter of Sunday's earthquake.

The earlier eruption left a 10,000 square-mile sheet of volcanic rock, more than a thousand feet thick, and so filled the sky with ash that it probably created our last ice age. Still, the eastern Indian Ocean is thought to be an area of infrequent tsunami activity. Earthquakes as a rule occur at the ridge of land and water, where plates usually meet and either slide, thrust or pull apart, releasing awesome power. But there are exceptions.

Americans believe that earthquakes are a West Coast problem. But the largest earthquake ever in the United States that we know of, probably at least as large as the one that destroyed most of San Francisco in 1906, occurred in the area of the Mississippi Valley in 1811. Boats were thrown over in the river and people drowned. Whole islands simply disappeared. This earthquake, and its aftershocks a year later, were so destructive that Congress passed the first federal relief act in 1815 to support the farmers whose previously healthy and farmable land was turned to swamp, sand and mud.

The quake covered a much larger area than the San Francisco catastrophe, but fewer people were killed, for in 1811 the area was sparsely settled by fewer than 10,000, most living in log houses that would have sustained the shaking well. However, the seismological activity that caused it has never been explained in definitive terms.

Scientists speculate that the earth here tried but failed to separate 600 million years ago, creating a weakness of some kind beneath the ground. The United States Geologic Survey vaguely refers to the area as a plate boundary zone, which simply means that the agency doesn't know if there are plate boundaries in the vicinity. But we do have historical evidence of many substantial earthquakes in a wide area of the southern Midwest, from St. Louis to Memphis - an area where more than 10 million people live today.

The greatest cliché in geology is the question, Can it happen again? Sure. Will it happen again? Well, nature is never overdue, and we simply don't know. The earth has had many configurations of land, water and living inhabitants over the ages, and if we think of an earth-changing event as being "overdue," we are failing to understand geologic time. It is mind-boggling to think that only 200 million years ago the earth was one gigantic continent, and one can only imagine the explosions that broke it into today's continents. The plates beneath these continents continue to creep, and they don't need an earthquake to move them along.

We know that Baja California is moving away from Mexico at the rate of two inches a year - and that it has been doing so for four to six million years. We know that Europe is moving away from the United States at the rate of one inch every year, and that Maui is moving away from South America at the rate of three inches a year. Geodesy is the science of the shape of the earth and, with the advent in the last decade of global positioning systems, the geodesists in future will be able to map every movement of the land and sea with authority and exactitude.

Our observation and reporting periods cover far too brief a period of time to allow us to see any pattern. What's more, there are physical realities in our world that we are not paying attention to. For instance, in 1971 an earthquake of 6.4 magnitude occurred in the San Fernando Valley in California. It occurred on a fault that had not been known to exist, and so surprised scientists, as well as the 80,000 people who lived there.

At one end of this valley is the Van Norman Dam, which lost 30 feet from its top, and tons of water, during the shaking. Behind it is a reservoir larger than the one that created the famous Johnstown, Pa., flood that killed 2,200 people in 1889. Given the damage, cracks and weaknesses that resulted, engineers concluded that the dam would have collapsed altogether had the quake lasted another eight seconds. Today, almost half a million people live in the valley.

Sunday's tragic earthquake occurred miles beneath the Indian Ocean, and despite its 9.0 magnitude it was hardly felt in Indonesia, and not at all in Sri Lanka. Yet the water displacement caused by the thrusting of the Indian plate beneath the Burma plate created 30-foot waves that were to kill people on the African coast more than 3,000 miles away. This distance may seem hard to believe, but after the Great Chilean Earthquake of 1960, tsunamis traveled more than 6,200 miles to Hilo, Hawaii, where they killed 61 people and destroyed many buildings with waves of more than 35 feet.

Oddly, a tsunami cannot be felt as it passes ships on the open ocean, for the wave is usually small, one to two feet, and traveling very fast, as fast as airliners. It is only as it approaches shallow water that it begins to break; as the bottom of the wave slows, the top keeps traveling at the higher speed and increases in height, hitting landfall at 30 to 40 miles an hour. In 1958, an earthquake in Lituya Bay, Alaska, caused a landslide into the ocean that created a tsunami 1,720 feet high, a wave that could have swept over the Empire State Building. Fortunately it headed into a wilderness area and did not travel across the ocean to Hawaii or Japan.

The possibility of great landmasses falling into the ocean is always with us, and recently scientists found vertical fault lines through a volcano on La Palma, one of the smaller and more westward Canary Islands. The volcano has a crater about five miles wide and a half-mile high, and erupts about every 200 years. The last eruption was in 1948, but the newly discovered fault lines have convinced some scientists that eventually the huge crater will break apart and slide into the ocean, bringing more than a half-trillion tons of rock with it.

Since tsunamis are created in proportion to the amount of land that has fallen into the water, this event would likely create a wave mass never before known to written history, many times bigger than the wave at Lituya Bay. The wave would diminish a little as it crossed the Atlantic, but if it hit the Atlantic Seaboard it could be higher than the skyscrapers of Boston, New York, Washington and Miami. Scientists do not know if it will take one, four, or 10 eruptions to separate the landmass, only that the separation is inevitable.

The only good news is that volcanoes usually send signals before they erupt, and it would take eight hours for the wave to travel from Africa to the United States' eastern shoreline. It is not sufficient time, however, to move all the people who would be in its path. In any event, surely the mountain on La Palma should be reduced in size, to lessen the impact should it ever slide into Atlantic. But, who will pay for such a huge reduction of a landmass?


•

BIG earthquakes occur infrequently, but when they do they usually come unexpectedly and with horrendous power. It is, of course, dangerous to live in an earthquake-prone area, but what area in the world can we say is earthquake-safe? Surely the people in the Mississippi Valley feel they are safe, as do the people in New York City. Yet, New York has a fault line going across 125th Street that I would guess 99 percent of the city's population does not know about.

And even if they did, they would likely be no more concerned about it than they are about La Palma. Americans have always lived in dangerous places - on the flat cyclone fields of the Midwest, on the hurricane battered coasts of Florida, on the flood plains of the South. We live in these places because we are uncertain about the time and place of the next disaster, and we are an adventurous culture. We believe that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, despite the many times it has.

I hope for the future in the same way I hope when I step on to an air-plane. I hope the people in control are of sound mind and body, and that they know what they are doing. Yet I know that simply wishing this is not enough. Terrible events in the future are in-evitable. But I also know that we will continue to be unprepared for them if we don't look more deeply into the past. By this, I don't mean a fire last year or a volcanic eruption a century ago. I mean another past, in geologic time, that we simply don't know enough about. Thinking about that ex-plosion on Sumatra 71,000 years ago is a good place to start.


Dennis Smith, a retired New York City firefighter, is the author of the forthcoming "San Francisco Is Burning," a history of the 1906 earthquake.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

December 28, 2004

Sounding the Alarm


No human power could have stopped the wall of water that washed over low-lying coasts from Indonesia to East Africa on Sunday. But human foresight could, and should, have mitigated the resulting tragedy. As it was, more than 25,000 people lost their lives in the flooding, and thousands more may die in the epidemics that may follow. That death toll could have been cut at least in half if the affected region had had the same kind of international warning network the United States has set up to protect the adjacent Pacific basin.

Of all the world's vulnerable regions, only the Pacific has such a warning network in place. Sunday's events suggest the value of extending such a system. Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, the Pacific warning center in Honolulu issued alerts to its member countries. These included Thailand and Indonesia, which were unfortunately so close to the original epicenter that towering walls of water were already claiming their first victims. But another two hours remained before 40-foot seas crashed into Sri Lanka, and three to four hours before the huge waves reached southern India. That could have given people in danger time to escape to high ground - if they had been told in advance and evacuation plans were in place. Such an avoidable tragedy should never be allowed to happen again.

The lengthy unprotected coastline vulnerable to such cataclysms stretches from Indonesia to South Africa. It includes teeming cities like Madras and Mumbai, internationally famous beach resorts in Thailand and Sri Lanka, and India's Andaman and Nicobar islands. In a 21st-century age of global Internet, satellite and cellphone communications, there can be no excuse for failing to make sure that lifesaving information reaches everyone in the path of these killer waves. Once a strong earthquake has been detected and analyzed, the waves' trajectories can be reliably predicted, and timely and specific warnings can be transmitted to those areas lying in their expected paths.

There are certain to be additional tsunamis in this region in the future, although the historical record suggests that it may be several decades before the next one strikes. That time should be used to create a reliable warning system that reaches all coastal areas. Washington, which has already offered "all appropriate assistance" to the affected countries, is uniquely qualified to provide the needed technical and humanitarian help.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

December 29, 2004
The Year the Earth Fought Back
By SIMON WINCHESTER

London — LIKE two bookends of calamity, earthquakes at Bam in Iran and off Sumatra in Indonesia have delineated a year of unusual seismic ferocity - a year, one might say, of living dangerously. Twelve months, almost to the very hour, before Sunday's extraordinary release of stress at the India-Burma tectonic plate boundary, a similar jolt at the boundary of the Arabian and the Eurasian Plates devastated one of the most celebrated of Persian caravan cities. The televised images of Bam's collapsed citadel and the sight of thousands of bodies being carried from the desert ruins haunted the world then just as the images of the drowned around the shores of the Bay of Bengal do today.

But that has not been the half of it. True, these two disasters were, in terms of their numbers of casualties, by far the most lethal. But in the 12 months that separated them, there have been many other ruinous and seismically ominous events, occurring in places that seem at first blush to be entirely disconnected.

This year just ending - which the all-too-seismically-aware Chinese will remind us has been that of the Monkey, and so generally much prone to terrestrial mischief - has seen killer earthquakes in Morocco in February and Japan's main island of Honshu in October. The Japan temblor left us with one widely published image - of a bullet-train, derailed and lying on its side - that was, in its own way, an augury of a very considerable power: no such locomotive had ever been brought low before, and the Japanese were properly vexed by its melancholy symbolism.

In America, too, this year there have been some peculiar signs. Not only has Mount St. Helens been acting up in the most serious fashion since its devastating eruption of May 1980, but on one bright mid-autumn day in California this year the great San Andreas Fault, where the North American and Pacific Plates rub alongside one another, ruptured. It was on Sept. 28, early in the morning, near the town of Parkfield - where, by chance, a deep hole was being drilled directly down into the fault by geologists to try to discern the fault's inner mysteries.

The rupture produced a quake of magnitude 6.0 - and though it did not kill anyone, it frightened millions, not least the government scientists who have the fault in their care. They had expected this particular quake to have occurred years beforehand - and had thought a seismic event so unlikely at the time that most were at a conference in Chicago when it happened. They rushed home, fascinated to examine their instruments, but eager also to allay fears that their drilling had anything to do with the tremors.

As every American schoolchild knows, the most notorious rupture of this same fault occurred nearly a century ago, at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906 - an occurrence now known around the world as the great San Francisco Earthquake. An entire city, a monument to the hopes and dreams of America's westward expansion, was destroyed by a mere 40 seconds of shaking. It was an occurrence possessed of a historical significance that may well be matched by the tragedy now unfolding on the far side of the world.

But, curiously, it turns out that there were many other equally momentous seismic events taking place elsewhere in the world in 1906 as well. Ten weeks before the San Francisco quake there was one of magnitude 8.2 on the frontier between Colombia and Ecuador; then on Feb. 16 there was a violent rupture under the Caribbean island of St. Lucia;then on March 1, 200 people were killed by an earthquake on Formosa; and then, to pile Pelion upon Ossa, Mt. Vesuvius in Italy erupted, killing hundreds.

But even then it wasn't over. The grand finale of the year's seismic upheaval took place in Chile in August, a quake that all but destroyed the port of Valparaiso. Twenty thousand people were killed. Small wonder that the Chinese, who invented the seismograph and who tend to take the long view of all historical happenings, note in their writings that 1906 was a highly unusual Year of the Fire Horse, when devastating consequences are wont to abound, worldwide.

Given these cascades of disasters past and present, one can only wonder: might there be some kind of butterfly effect, latent and deadly, lying out in the seismic world? There is of course no hard scientific truth - no firm certainty that a rupture on a tectonic boundary in the western Pacific (in Honshu, say) can lead directly to a break in a boundary in the eastern Pacific (in Parkfield), or another in the eastern Indian ocean (off Sumatra, say). But anecdotally, as this year has so tragically shown, there is evidence aplenty.

Plate tectonics as a science is less than 40 years old. It is possible that common sense suggests what science has yet to confirm: that the movement among the world's tectonic plates may be one part of enormous dynamic system, with effects of one plate's shifting more likely than not to spread far, far away, quite possibly clear across the surface of the globe..

In recent decades, thanks largely to the controversial Gaia Theory developed by the British scientists James Lovelock, it has become ever more respectable to consider the planet as one immense and eternally interacting living system - the living planet, floating in space, every part of its great engine affecting every other, for good or for ill.

Mr. Lovelock's notion, which he named after the earth goddess of the Ancient Greeks, makes much of the delicacy of the balance that mankind's environmental carelessness increasingly threatens. But his theory also acknowledges the somber necessity of natural happenings, many of which seem in human terms so tragically unjust, as part of a vast system of checks and balances. The events that this week destroyed the shores of the Indian Ocean, and which leveled the city of Bam a year ago, were of unmitigated horror: but they may also serve some deeper planetary purpose, one quite hidden to our own beliefs.

It is worth noting that scientists have discovered that the geysers in Yellowstone National Park started to erupt much more frequently in the days immediately following a huge earthquake in central Alaska in 2002. There turned out to be a connection, one hitherto quite unrealized, that intimately linked places thousands of miles apart. Geologists are now looking for other possible links - sure in the knowledge that if real geological connections can be determined, then we may in due course be able to divine from events on one side of the planet indications that will allow us to warn people on the other - and so perhaps allow them to prepare, as those in today's Indian Ocean communities never were able, for the next time.

For one thing is certain, and comfortless: on earth, eternally restless and alive, there will, and without a scintilla of doubt, be a next time.

Simon Winchester is the author of "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[theCryptofishist]

Just one correction: Year of the Monkey isn't over yet--sometime in febraury, depending on the lunar calendar.

I"ve been wondering why they didn't just issue a warning anyway. I mean, they didn't have the bouys to track it, but they still could have put out something on radio saying it might happen. Maybe the historical imputus wasn't there for complience, but if only one in ten had ignored--okay, I'm making stuff up. but I'm from earthquake country and solidly in the better safe than sorry camp.

If the tv is to be believed, I'm okay--tsunamiwise. Partly because of the narrowness of the golden gate--something I worked out for myself a while ago, so it's good to know that my basic "common sence" physics was good.

I also heard on tv that a) Sumatra moved 100 feet and b) that the earth wobbled in it's orbit. Unfortunately, it was mentioned as a side issue in both cases, so I have no idea if that was real or bad science reporting.

Ya'll know it's our nwerners that are in danger, and our hawai'ians. States wise I mean, oh and British Columbia.

[Rian Jackson]

yup. we're potentially fucked.. though there's that mountain range to the west, which might help out, a little.


wonder what would happen to puget sound?

[theCryptofishist]

Well, fourty feet above sea level is supposed to be high enough. And I'm sure that even at lower elevations it aint gonna travel miles inland.

With the bay, the narrowness of the entrance means that a lot of the water and energy wont come in--I don't know about the sound, Maybe as it narrows and narrows the energy will be intensified. I wonder if there's any sort of anyalysys of the ~1700s event.

*fishy sets out badger bait*

[stuart]

that article is a steaming pile of hyperbole and innuendo

first, I doubt the earth really pays much attenntion to the abritrary time delineations of humans, even if they have cute monikers like 'monkey'.

second, his subtle implication that scientists were perhaps responsible for a quake in central california is preposterous. 'fault in their care' my ass.

third, why delight in the fact that said scientists were at a conference? Said scientists, with a few notable and failing exceptions, would be the first to tell you that they can't predict quakes.

fourth, hyperbolic statements like 'entire city destroyed' If that is the case then how come there are many pre-quake victorians still standing in S.F.?


at the end of the day we just don't know when, where, or how hard. Trying to draw causalities has been the province of this kind of science for decades and has resulted in nothing all that conclusive.


still, it reminds me that I need to earthquake strap the wine cabinet

[Rian Jackson]

hey CWL, we're what, maybe 10 feet above sea level here?
but there is the whole sound bit.
gonna go research.....

[Rian Jackson]

The Tsunami that Hit Seattle
Scientists use computer modeling to recreate giant wave


Scientists have revealed evidence of a devastating tsunami that swept over the Seattle area about 1,100 years ago following an earthquake in Puget Sound.

The tsunami is thought to have reached between 3 and 7 meters in height and is thought to have traveled at 30 to 45 kilometers per hour. According to computer simulated re-creations of the event, Cultas Bay and West Point were the locations that received the greatest impact. Estimates reveal that the wave could have travelled from the middle of Puget Sound to West Point in only three minutes.

The earthquake was produced by the Seattle fault, a fault line that is still active today. In fact, there are today over 3 million people who live in the Seattle area. An earthquake and resulting tsunami would likely cause considerable damage with little or no warning.

Fortunately, many Seattle buildings have been constructed to withstand the potential geological activity of the area. But public-awareness of the likelihood of a tsunami following a quake is of particular concern. Increasingly, public education is spreading the word that in the event of an earthquake, anyone in low-lying coastal areas should move to higher protected ground immediately.

In essence, the earthquake itself is now the warning signal that a tsunami may follow.

oh yeah. they can start IN the sound. duh.

[stuart]

the time has long since passed for us to be affected. There was a reported moderate change in swell down in southern Mexico, but nothing of note in S.D.. The wave was reported to be propogating at roughly 500mph, in the province of commercial air liners. You could have done 4 round trips to indonesia by now.

[CoworkerLurker]

hey CWL, we're what, maybe 10 feet above sea level here?
but there is the whole sound bit.
gonna go research.....

Have you ever ridden a bike up Broad Street?

Or even walked up from Pike Place Market?

More than 10. Plus we're up in the building. Plus all those other buildings are in the way.

The Sound should take a lot of energy out of a tsunami. Unless the epicenter is just on the other side of the Sound. I think one of our clients used that scenario when designing a building on the water.

[Rian Jackson]

no, i just work downtown and live on a steep hill and don't really drive. never walked it.

phlbt.

the talk is actually about the Seattle fault and subduction zones - the Sound is big enough that it can have its own tsunamis. But they're saying it would need to be a 7 or more to really generate a proper one. Up to 7 meters.. let's see, 21 feet... how high ARE we here... if you subtract the 14 floors (i don't put a lot of stock in high buildings to save me). The Pike Place hillclimb would absorb most of it, but then the rest if this area would just
slide
on
down.

When it hits lets hope i'm at home, right?

[Simply Joel]

i live a few hundred miles north of New Madrid fault.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/bytopic/new_madrid.html

i am not making any predictions, yet it does give me pause to prepare, like strapping down the wine, stuart.

[Rian Jackson]

i grew up smack on top of a fault (ok, maybe 1/8 mile, maybe) with a mine shaft 50 feet below.

[Rian Jackson]

check out Mt. Etna's smoke ring from 2000

[stuart]

that looks like a luminous jellyfish

[Rian Jackson]

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natura ... g_id=12643

[Bob]

It's not as if there's a shortage of engineers in that part of the world.
I predict a tsunami of finger-pointing.

[Rian Jackson]

bob, are your penguins fucking?

[Bob]

Just doing a little puffin, maybe.

[Rian Jackson]

we'll see after the 63 day gestation period.

[Rian Jackson]

...unless it's not an emperor. then it's shorter.

[samtzu]

...unless it's not an emperor. then it's shorter.

Shorter than what?

... oh.. the gestation period... sorry, I thought you meant shorter than an emporer penquin... which includes a lot of my friends... including you...

[theCryptofishist]

i live a few hundred miles north of New Madrid fault.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/bytopic/new_madrid.html

i am not making any predictions, yet it does give me pause to prepare, like strapping down the wine, stuart.

You need any other pointers? And to what code are the local structures built?

[theCryptofishist]

check out Mt. Etna's smoke ring from 2000

Great. It's not like the Hayward Fault gives us anything that pretty.

*fishy thinks*

Hm. Can I make Wayward Fault a thematic character for 05's burn . . .

[Rian Jackson]

POSTED ON 3PLAYA...FUCKIN'A:

An account from a friend of a friend working at a resort in the Maldives. His name is Dave Lowe:

I was in my office at the narrowest part of the island (20 meters across) at the northern end with the sand bank, when heard a strange bump against the wall outside my office, I ran down the hall to find water streaming in under the door and I could barely open it. As I got it open my eyes popped out of my head when I saw the sea was not only level with our island, there was a wall of water coming, frothing, boiling, and fucking angry as hell, bearing down on us.

In the distance, I watched as the 50 water bungalows that lined the reef edge were disintegrating like matchwood dumping guests and furniture into the sea. Eddies and vortexes whirled round and there was a strange mist everywhere, smelled like death, as this wave moved towards us in slow motion. I remember turning to run towards someplace safe. But how can you be safe, 1 meter above the sea, water on all sides, with just flimsy thatch buildings made of coconut wood all around, and a wall of water bearing down? I literally stopped breathing, and ran. I didn't get very far, as a wave smashed me against the wall of the executive offices and instantly my cell phone, keys, watch, ID and wallet were sucked out of my pockets.

As I struggled to stand up I heard screams as children and guests were washed past me through reception straight out to sea... I grabbed the ones I could and screamed at them to hang onto my arm, and we inched our way along the wall that was now breaking up from the pressure of the water....in front of us were guests running like crazy from the disintegrating water bungalows and water restaurant that had now collapsed.... As the water rose, Planks and debris smashed up against the walls of the exec offices, and the next thing I knew, the next wave came and tore it open, washing away staff, computers, hard drives, and filing cabinets in a second, straight out to sea.

As I reached reception with the two guests I threw them on top of the counter as mattresses and tables and broken windows smashed through the reception, taking everything with it. By now the water was up to my chest, and I grabbed an 80 year old woman who was just drifting past, and hauled her up on top as well. The next thing we knew, the guest shop and water sports center collapsed, and terrified people, on the roof, were desperately clinging to it as the thatch fell apart.

My staff stood there on top of the counter, as guests screamed and grabbed them. One security guard handed me a talkie and fled. As the water was continuing to rise, so fast it was like a horror movie, I frantically called out on the talkie to see if any staff were there. No answer. By now I could not hang on any longer and hauled myself up onto the counter, as the big debris from the water bungalows tore through reception, taking what was left of the shops and offices. We were left there, with water surging all around us, with a wall behind us that collapsed into the jewelry store.

Then a guest showed me her husbands leg, with a gash so bad I could see his bone, and I frantically got a towel to stop the bleeding. With 2 meters of water in the lobby now, waves 1-2 meters higher, all I could think was how long before we die. how far does the water have to go before we are all washed away into the middle of the Indian ocean? We stayed like this for
about 20 minutes, just waiting for the building to collapse, but as suddenly as it came, the water vanished, leaving fish flopping on the floor, and seaweed draped everywhere.

As we tried to take stock of what had happened, I looked in the opposite direction of where the wave had come and saw, to my horror, that it was coming back, bigger, madder, and full of dangerous debris..... some guests and kids had thought the worst was over, and were starting to get off the trees and remaining roofs. I screamed at them THE WATERS COMING BACK!!!! STAY OFF THE BEACH!!! And we had even less warning the second time, because the wave just crashed into us with refrigerators, water heaters, computers and smashed wood. We rode out the wave, just waiting to die, as the guest with the gashed leg fainted. His wife was grabbing my throat so hard I could hardly breathe, and for the next 20 minutes the water was up and we could do nothing as the reverse wave filled the lagoon and destroyed what was left of the restaurant, we watched tables get dumped into the water, and 3 gas canisters from the kitchen exploded.

With smaller waves now, I tried to evacuate the guests to the other, larger end of the island, I realized the island had been cut in half, a deep dangerous trench had developed and we were trapped. Just then, a second series of waves came through, as large as the first 4, and desperately we ran to the spa, where a cement building without its roof still remained. There, I found other guests with 4 broken bones, massive cuts, and twisted ankles.

For the next four hours, we watched as these waves came again and again, some as high as the first, as debris from coconut trees to roofs washed back and forth, as the only staff there, I set up a triage unit to treat the people with the resort doctor (who was so traumatized he could barely speak) about 2 hours into this, we heard a seaplane land in the lagoon.... And I grabbed the talkie and ran down the jetty, screaming at them to take off.... It was too late, they had tied up to the pontoon, and They could not see the water was now coming back, and the eddies were so strong that the plane (with its engines still screaming) was actually being sucked underneath the water.... I ducked down, expecting the engines to disintegrate, but at the last moment, a cabin crew cut the rope, the plane bobbed away and took off, dipping its wings to show us help was coming.

Eventually we go all the guests at one end of the island, but walking past the rooms, every single one had been demolished, and suitcases and passports were washed up on the beach. That afternoon, we sandbagged a building and got all the guests inside, and waited for the next waves, which we heard were coming. At least we were safer than at reception, where 30-40 meters of the island had been destroyed, washed out to sea. That night, we set up beach patrols to watch for more waves and 2 times had to send out the alarm that the water was coming back. With the moon full, we had a high tide at midnight, and we were extremely concerned if the waves came back. They didn't. We had no food or water as everything had been washed away, we watched the sun rise and everywhere on the beach were passports, champagne bottles, smashed wood, brochures and business cards not just from our resort
but from others too.

It took us 2 days to get the guests off, and another day for the staff to leave. We got to Male with no belongings, as the staff quarters were washed away completely, it wasn't until we got to Male that we had even heard of the devastation everywhere else.

- Dave Lowe is currently in Male, waiting for a flight home.

[stuart]

water sports center

heh heh

[theCryptofishist]

I'd been wondering about the Maldives as they are so low that they are projected to dissapere with global warming.

[Bob]

Re: the Midwest, most houses built to resist high wind are likely to be okay wrt earthquake.

[unjonharley]

My mobil sit's on piers that are attached to 4x4ft. plates. Under the plates is a bed of large gravel. Then it is chained in place. It may dance but not to far.