All I can say is Yikes! Imagine that happening to any U.S. Coastline? 11,000+ and counting...

 

Yeah ... a 30 - 40 foot tall wall of water. I can't imagine it. I've been on Flathead Lake with some 15 - 20 foot waves during some heckacious winds. Luckily we were in a 24' cruiser. It doesn't happen very often, but it really gets you to respect the power of mama nature .... and in short order! Took me three days to get that cushion unattached from my bottom. A Tsunami ..well ..forget it!

 

We hit some pretty ruff stuff from time to time when I was in the Navy. A destr<! >oyer seems pretty darn small out in the middle of an ocean sometimes, but I couldn't imagine seeing something like that coming at me. That would be a terrifying way to go.

 

On MSN they said the waves reached 500 mph at the center. One thing I did pick up that was very useful is that the water receeded a great distance while people watched and wondered where the water went.

If you are around a large body of water and see it suddenly disappear, that might be the time to start running for your life and higher ground.

 

I wondered about Tsunami when I heard of the quake, first listed as an 8.4 now confirmed as a 9.0. Which is several hundred times more powerful. In fact this quake is the largest recorded in 40 years or so. Had it occurred beneath a built-up populated area there would be very little left.

Having done a considerable amount of research into Tsunami I expected the area Governments to issue warnings, which was apparently not done. The wave heights were not immense, biggest I noted on CNN was reported at 40 feet, but with the shallow slopes of many landmasses around the Sumatran Basin the damage would be severe. I am wondering if the sea-floor collapsed significantly. Surface or Sub-surface subsidence will cause the largest Tsunami, one was recorded in Alaska some years ago at a height of over 300 feet.

And note the times, 5 hours later the wave hit the Somalian coast of Africa, last I heard 9 people were lost there. Tsunami can move faster than the speed of sound in open ocean.

The damage, and loss of life is horrendous, and will go much higher in time.

[i]If you're there, and that happens, it's way way way too late.

 

The entire island of Sumatra moved 100 feet to the left ...this was a big one

 

I think CNN said the earthquake was picked up by the seismograph in Central Park!

 

They say that underwater quakes are worse than land based quakes because they do more damage over a wider area. It seems strange that warnings were not given. The quake epicenter and approx strength should have been known fairly quickly. That would have given the areas to be hit some notice.

 

It took eight hours for the wave to hit Somalia; estimated speed was 375 to 410 MPH…quick for a pressure wave going through water.

 

9.0 ... wow.

What was the World Series quake of 1987 and the Northridge quake of 1993? Weren't those 8's or just high 7 reading quakes?

As far as warnings go, these are fairly impoverished nations, with the exception of Malaysia. They don't have the technology in place to detect this sort of thing. I watched CNBC yesterday and they reported they [Indonesia and Thailand] have no warning system in place and an evacuation would take 6 hours and they had a best 2 hours warning.

Indonesia is mainly a sweatshop country for international manufacturers, also Thailand. There's some tourist industry there, though their clientele is mostly Aussies, Kiwis, and mainland Europeans. Who gives a rip about Somalia after what their citizens did to our soldiers in the 1990's. [Here comes the Mod Squad with finger on the "nuke" button] Hopefully those responsible for those atrocious acts against our soldiers were the ones swept up in the Tsunami in Somalia. Not to mention if our government had any sense, NOT ONE CENT should be sent to them for "relief".

 

World Series quake was 6.9, I believe I heard on the news following this one.

RNE, A 9.0 quake is not "several hundred times more powerful" than an 8.4 quake. The Richter scale is logarithmic so that each full point corresponds to an increase in magnitude by ten. So, a 9.0 quake is TEN times more powerful than an 8.0 quake. But that would make it a little over 100 times more powerful than the World Series quake, which collapsed bridges. Yowser.

Latest report I heard this morning is that the confirmed death toll has surpassed 40,000. Wow.

Jason

 

Reports were that the Thai services KNEW of the quake immediately and tried to warn everyone....In fact, the US services were even trying to find someone to warn...

But, as stated, given that the infrastructure is not there to get the warning out...
it must have been a frustrating thing for those that knew it was happening....

*

And while, yes, the Somalians did us dirty in Black Hawk down....
not ALL Somalians did that...
and to prevent others from having to turn to the evil ways of terror as their only income...
we maybe SHOULD help...

 

India recently purchased their second aircraft carrier, is working on a third that is extremely fast. Also they have an ongoing ICBM program, that will be able to deliver a nuke anywhere in the world. Yet they have no technology* ,nor the means to put radio bouys in the Indian Ocean, or any kind of self defense warning system to their general population. * I'm sure the United States and a host of other countries would be more than willing to share this Technology, but they have their priorities.

 

A few thoughts on this tsunami....

I've visited or lived briefly in several of these places; ****et for 6 months, Sri Lanka (Unawatuna) for 2, and sailed around Langkawi and Penang Malaysia. Alll these places have been hammered, or lost. The train in Sr Lanka where over 800 were lost...been on it. Unawatuna beach and the house that took me in...undoubtedly destroyed (hopefully the family survived). I'm close to tears as I type this, fearing for the gentle, giving local folks I befriended, and the amazing ex-patriots from various countries who accepted me as their own.

Even with the videos on CNN and all, it's hard sometimes to relate to people who seem so different...let me assure you they (the locals) love as we do, feel as we do, befriend as we do, and deserve our help. [I'm not saying anyone has said or inferred any different, ok?].

Many in the cruising "Yachtie" community have suffered as well, with damaged and destroyed boats and/or businesses...and perhaps a few lives. For many, they are not wealthy people and the boats are their homes, that they scrimped and saved for. They are simply folks who choose to live "outside the box" of the everyday grind. Fortunately they are a group of individualists who will rush to help one another as best they can when disaster strikes...but for many it will be the end of a dream they dared to reach for.

As far as tsunami facts go...being offshore in deeper water is the safest place to be. Near or on shore is the last place. Since tsunamis are caused by underwater seismic disturbance, the horizontally transmitted power is from the seabed and up, sometimes thousands of feet, as opposed to the usual storm waves caused by wind blowing over the water. A tsunami wave in the ocean might only be a few inches "tall" and spread over a large area, but will cause devastation when the deepness of the power piles up on a shore. Wind caused wave power starts at the surface and goes down, and not very far, perhaps a few dozens of feet at most.

An analogy would be sitting in a full bathtub and blowing hard on the water (regular storm) vs moving a leg up and down an inch or two (tsunami).

A man in a 20 foot boat in 40 mph winds (lake or ocean) is more at risk than the same man and boat in the ocean with a tsunami moving under him. The guy in the ocean probably wouldn't notice a thing.

Now if/when a big asteroid slams into the ocean, all bets are off. That's the universe doing a cannonball dive into a kiddie pool.

Anyway,thanks for listening. I'm worried about a few people I can't reach, and many who touched my life and I couldn't find if I tried to anyway.

--Erik

 

Well, I've just heard that the death toll is now at 55,000. Worse yet, we're gonna be buying the bulk of this relief effort; $35M so far and up $20M from yesterday . I wonder if I could by a Dell today; the customer service is in India.