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Geology News
Tsunami Current Events

Fifty years ago this month the largest tsunami ever documented occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska. It was a 1720-foot-tall wave produced by a chain reaction of events. A 7.7 magnitude earthquake on the Fairweather Fault triggered a 40 million cubic yard rockfall that plunged 3000 feet, splashing into Lituya Bay to produce the big wave. This article includes a map, satellite image, survivor accounts and image collection.

Thousands of small earthquakes occur every day, but only a few cause mass destruction. Learn about nine of the world’s most damaging earthquakes, such as the quake in Shensi, China, 1556; California, U.S.A., 1906; Alaska, U.S.A., 1964; Peru, 1970; Tangshan, China, 1976; Mexico City, 1985; Bam, Iran, 2003; Sumatra, Indonesia, 2004; and Kashmir, Pakistan, 2005.

Scientists in Japan have begun work on an extensive project that aims to predict earthquakes and tsunamis. They have drilled into the fault zone of the Nankai Trough and retrieved cores of sea floor, which are being used to map stress lines along the subduction zone. Their findings could be applied to similar areas, such as the Sunda Trench, which was the origin of the massive Indonesian tsunami in 2004.

A fault in the eastern Mediterranean may be the source of multiple tsunamis with a recurrence interval of about 800 years.

NASA has new research that should improve existing tsunami warning systems with real-time GPS monitoring. Also a new theory on the source of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

USGS has published a report titled “Variations in City Exposure and Sensitivity to Tsunami Hazards in Oregon”. Here is part of what they say about it…. “Evidence of past events and modeling of potential future events suggest that tsunamis are significant threats to Oregon coastal communities….. a potential tsunami-inundation zone from a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake has been delineated.”

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Earth Learning Idea is distributing a sixteen page booklet about tsunamis in .pdf format. The book is by Fanjith Dediwalage and being distributed with the permission of Geoscience Education and Outreach Services of Australia.

“Research by a team of United States and Japanese geoscientists may help explain why part of the seafloor near the southwest coast of Japan is particularly good at generating devastating tsunamis, such as the 1944 Tonankai event, which killed at least 1,200 people.”

NOAA is working on a series of relief models that will help assess the tsunami and storm-driven flood threats for the eastern coast of the United States. Just finished are models for Long Island, New York; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Daytona Beach. Florida.

“In order to extend alert times and avoid false alarms, a new seafloor pressure recording system has been designed to detect tsunamis shortly after their development in the open ocean.” (quoted from the NASA source)

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Here’s the place to go if you want to check for a tsunami warning anywhere in the world. PTWC provides warnings for Pacific basin teletsunamis (tsunamis that can cause damage far away from their source) to almost every country around the Pacific rim and to most of the Pacific island states.

NOAA has a website named the “All-Hazards Monitor”. There you can see the NOAA communications for a variety of hazards and environmental topics. These include: air quality, coral bleaching, droughts, earthquakes, excessive heat, fire weather, flooding, harmful algal blooms, hurricanes, oil spills, rip currents, severe weather, space weather, tsunamis, volcanoes and more.

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From the article: “Hong Kong and the neighbouring territory of Macau face a roughly 10 percent risk of being hit by a devastating tsunami in the next hundred years, scientists said.”

Screenshot of NOAA Map

NOAA Pacific Services Center has an online map creation tool that you can use to access tsunami evacuation zone maps for locations in Hawaii. Simply type in the address, press the button and it generates a map of your location showing nearby tsunami evacuation zones. They also have some pre-programmed maps for specific segments of the coastline. These plot the evacuation zones as an overlay on a Google map.

©iStockphoto.com greggdunnett

The coast of Phoenicia (now Lebanon) was struck by a powerful tsunami in 551 AD. A fault has been discovered that is believed to have caused the earthquake that launched this tsunami and it could have a recurrence interval of about 1500 years. This means that the next earthquake - and possibly tsunami - could happen at any time.

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Researchers at Oregon State University are building a scale model of Seaside, a tourist destination town on the Oregon coast. It is being built at 1/50th scale in a wave simulation tank. They will then model what a 35-foot-tall tsunami will do to the town. Why? The Cascadia subduction zone is just offshore and a large tsunami generated there would strike the coast in only 15 to 20 minutes. They hope to answer questions such as… Should people downtown do a horizontal evacuation and travel inland or should they do a vertical evacuation and head for the upper floors of the town’s taller buildings?

Damage from earthquakes, floods, subsidence, landslides, expansive soils, and other geologic processes are not covered by the typical homeowners insurance policy. Thousands of people across the United States are learning very expensive geology lessons every year. This makes a strong case for geoscience education, easy access to professional opinion, and maybe some changes in the way that insurance is sold.

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Scientists at the University of Washington have a $130 million grant to build the world’s largest underwater research lab. “Project Neptune” will study global climate, greenhouse gases, earthquakes, tsunami, fish stocks, harbor life, seafloor volcanoes, marine mineral resources, ocean currents and much more

Oman Map

An earthquake in the Makran subduction zone could trigger a tsunami that would strike the east coast of Oman. A magnitude 8 earthquake in 1945 produced a 10-meter high tsunami that killed over 4000 people on the Makran coastline. Work is progressing on a tsunami detection and telecommunication warning system to protect the country.

In 1755 Lisbon was one of the most prosperous cities in the world, but all of that was wiped out when an offshore earthquake caused extensive damage and triggered a deadly tsunami. In a matter of minutes an estimated 60,000 people were killed and much of the city destroyed. To prevent the spread of disease the dead and debris were hastily buried. Recently a mass grave containing an estimated 3000 victims and large amounts of debris has been excavated to learn more about the earthquake and its impact.

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The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a zone of recurrent earthquakes with the potential of producing a tsunami. It is so close to the continent that residents on the west side of Vancourver Island will have very little warning when a tsunami is produced. A new tsunami detection system takes advantage of GPS monitoring to detect horizontal ground motion and tidal monitoring to detect water motion. An earthquake followed by tsunami will make the ground and the water move in a specific pattern. The new system is configured to detect this pattern and send an automatic warning. The time require for human interpretation is eliminated, giving residents a precious few minutes of response before the tsunami arrives.