And, did it work, was it worth it, or did they all feel really stupid afterwards when no tsunami materialized?
Also, how does it work? How can they tell that a tsunami is coming? How accurate is it? How many times a year will the Mayor of Hilo allow them to set off the alarm with nothing happening, before he’ll say, “Okay, guys, that’s it, get some better technology before you come into my office again”?
Did anyone ever want to set off the tsunami warning, but the mayor said, “No, no, we don’t want to spoil the tourist season”, and then he was proved totally wrong when a tsunami came along and wiped out the whole town, including Pierce Brosnan’s daughter? Or is that just in Hollywood?
I have been armchair traveling in Hawaii this week, and all the tourist guides say, in terribly serious tones, “Obey all tsunami warnings!” Is this a real problem in Hawaii, or is it just Fodor’s CYA?
(And yes, I do know that they have real tsunamis in Hilo–that’s why I’m asking whether they’ve ever actually set the alarm off and had people grabbing their babies and heading for higher ground.)
I don’t know offhand if the City of Hilo does it, but I think there are a number of places in Japan that have annual tsunami drills. Given that the Hilo waterfront was heavily impacted in 1960, I wouldn’t be surprised at folks there taking the whole subject pretty seriously. Even if there were a false alarm, I don’t think it wouldn’t have too much of an effect on the tourist business - a false alarm isn’t a long-term event, and it’d add a dash of excitement to the trip.
Tsunamis can be triggered by large, sudden displacements of sea water that occur as the result of large earthquake or volcanic eruption-related seafloor movement. Since is the Pacific Ocean is bordered by the “Ring of Fire” (lots of volcanoes and active faulting along crustal plate boundaries), tsunamis are more likely to occur in the Pacific than anywhere else.
How big the tsunami is in a given location, and how much warning people have, depends on the location and size of the triggering event. For example, a tsunami generated by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the Aleutian Islands in 1946 took about 5 hours to reach the northern shores of Hawaii; had the warning system been in place, there would have been plenty of time for folks to get out of the way (159 people actually died). In contrast, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurring just off the coast of Flores Island in Indonesia in 1992 triggered a series of tsunamis that struck just 2 minutes after the initial shocks, and nearly 2000 people died.
I think if I heard the warning… I’d run like hell, and worry about whether or not to feel stupid afterwards.
Sometime in the mid-eighties, we had a tsunami alert on the coast of Washington. I was in the volunteer fire department in one of the beach areas, and we went up and down every street in the tide flat area telling everyone to get to high ground. We had a couple of 50ft hills a bit inland where everyone gathered.
The warning was triggered by an earthquake off the Alaskan coast. We had about five hours warning.
When the wave finally showed up, it peaked at about three feet high. Sort of annoyed the populace, but it’s hard to tell the power of a wave until it actually hits the coast.
Sorry if this didn’t help, but I don’t get to tell that story very often.
Not irrelevant, Saltire, that’s exactly what I was talking about. I’ve seen footage of the obedient Japanese going through their tsunami drills; I guess I should have specified American tsunami warnings. I’m trying to visualize rugged individualistic Amurrikins being told to move to higher ground, “I paid for this vacation, dammit, and I’m not movin’ off this beach for no friggin’ tidal wave, no way…”
So I was wondering whether anybody on the West Coast or in Hawaii does drills and what the compliance is. All the Hawaii tourist guides have the same facts about the Big Ones that hit during earlier eras. But it looks like it’s been a long dry spell since 1964.
Fillet, thanks for the links. So the Flores tsunami–they didn’t have any warnings. Two minutes after the initial shock, sploosh. Shall we extrapolate this to the northern end of the San Andreas Fault, up by Shelter Cove? Glad I live in the Midwest.
To be complete, I don’t really think that everyone actually went up the hill. We figured they had the right to decide for themselves. We just made sure everyone had the information, and left it up to them. I wouldn’t have wanted to force any Amurrikans to leave their beach shacks.
I often wonder what it would have been like if it’d been a real killer wave, and we’d had to go through the wreckage looking for those that didn’t listen.
Hawaii resident here. Our last major tsunami warning was in January of 1995, a result of the Kobe, Japan earthquake. The earthquake struck at about 5am Japan time, and the resulting tsunami reached Hawaii around lunchtime, I think… I could be off there. Anyway, we had some time to prepare for it. Low-lying area residents were evacuated, or at least encouraged to evacuate. Since the earthquake struck before business hours, employers had time to think about what to do (downtown Honolulu is pretty close to the ocean). Some gave their employees the day off. Some made it optional. Public schools were open, I think. So it wasn’t a total evacuation.
The tsunami hit. No one could tell. I think the measurable difference it made on the surf was a half inch. Or three inches. I forget which. Woo hoo! At any rate, it was very anticlimactic.
I don’t think anyone felt stupid. They just felt… overprepared. Heh. Okay, some people probably did feel stupid, but mostly, we were reminded how tsunamis make island living so exciting.
I think there’s the Pacific Tsunami Warning something-or-other name that monitors seismic and weather activities. They team up with Civil Defense to issue warnings and announcements.
We don’t have drills (at least not here in Honolulu), but if you look in the Yellow Pages, there are guidelines about what to do during a tsunami warning. There’s also a map of sorts that shows which low-lying areas are at risk of severe damage in the event of a tsunami. AFAIK, only Japan does the drill thing. They also do earthquake drills.
As to how the tourists in Waikiki reacted to it, that’s a really good question. I have no idea. But honestly, if there was going to be a tsunami here, Waikiki is the LAST place I’d want to be. It’s close to the water, and there’s basically only one or two main streets going through it. Traffic can be hell on a regular day. And there’s tons of people there.
Alerting tourists to something like a tsunami must be a challenge in itself. You can’t assume that tourists would listen to the local radio stations, or watch local news broadcasts, or read local papers; they’re usually out of their rooms all day anyway, seeing the sights, or shopping. Then there’s the fact that many tourists in Waikiki do not speak or understand English well. My guess is that hotels have a way to alert their guests about these things. It’s the only effective way I can think of. After all, all tourists have to go somewhere to sleep at night.
Whether they pay any attention to the warnings they do get is a different matter. A lot of tourists are in total vacation mode. They don’t think bad things can happen on vacation. Or, like you said, they don’t like the idea of some teesny little wave taking over their vacation. As a result, they do stupid things. I’m sure that on the day the tsunami hit, a couple of bozos were out there on the beach lookin’ for the big, purty wave. :rolleyes:
It really is OK, guys, you can say “Tidal Wave”, it is just as right (or just as wrong) as “tsunami”. But I know that saying something in a foriegn language makes folks feel more sophisticated.
Before I started this thread, I went and looked in the archives to see if it had been covered. All there was, was a discussion from October when various scientists had predicted that the Atlantic continental shelf was going to fall off and cause a giant tsunami that would destroy Washington. And in that thread, somebody got yelled at for saying “tidal wave”.
Somebody also got yelled at for misspelling “tsunami”.
So. I know how to spell “tsunami”. I’m safe as long as I don’t say “tidal wave”.
Audrey, thank you for opening your heart to us and sharing your memories of what must have been a very trying and emotionally draining experience.
DDG, did you notice the comment in the Flores Island link about greater numbers of women dying than men? The researchers speculate that it might have had something to do with the guys running for the hills while the women stopped for the elderly and the children. Naw, that wouldn’t happen here…
BTW, for reasons relating to geologic arcana like fault geometry and styles of crustal deformation, the San Andreas isn’t much of a threat as a tsunami inducer compared to the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of Washington and Oregon. If you went through the archives and found that other thread on tsunamis, have a quick look at the links in my last post for some extra info on that area. (The Quicktime movies on the Oregon Grad Institute site are sort of neat, but will take a long time to load.) The first tsunami effects would occur within a matter of minutes.
And if you thought you were safe in the Midwest - well, maybe. There’s always this little thing to worry about.
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel… do we have to go through this again? Tell you what, from now till the end of time I’ll not question a single thing you say about taxes/accounting if you’ll please stop telling people it’s okay to use inappropriate terms for geologic phenomena.
AudreyK, do they use civil defense sirens at all to get the warnings out?
fillet: why is “tsunami” more correct that “tidal wave”? You do know that the 'tidal" in tidal wave does not refer to any mistaken idea that tidal waves are caused by tides, but to the fact they only occur in tidal areas, ie oceans (altho a big lake could have one, i guess). “Tsunami” means “harbor wave”, and of course they are not caused by, nor do they occur only in harbors. “Seismic wave” is better, but a few tidal waves are caused by non-siemic activitys, like avalanches, altho those are rare. I’ll go with seismic wave, if I want the best term under most circumstances.
“Seismic wave” can refer to enough other things, and in fact more often does, that it’s probably not a good compromise, Daniel. I’ll stick with tsunami - it’s unambiguous.
Fillet-- I think the sirens were used, but not very often. They might have gone off for a few seconds every hour or so. Sorry to say that I don’t really remember. Radio broadcasts were frequently interrupted by Civil Defense updates and announcements, though, and I do recall them referring to the sirens going off. For what purpose, I don’t remember. Perhaps someone familiar with CD can shed light on this?
Fillet, you mentioned the tsunamis that hit the island of Hawaii back in the 40s and 60s. I was thinking about the same ones when I saw the title of this thread. In fact, when I worked as a transcriber last year, I transcribed some taped interviews with survivors of those tsunamis. They had some amazing stories to tell. Quite the opposite of mine. Fascinating stuff.
Fillet, you forget (or you did not know) that MY degree was in Marine Biology, more precisely Littoral Ecology. And, yes, I do know, that scientists use either Siesmic wave or Tsunami, but not tidalwave. However, in any case, the “tidal” in tidal wave- does not, & did not in any way refer to a mistaken idea that these waves were caused by tides. It is a very old word, from the time when by “tidal” one meant “oceanic”. Yes, i know we had this discussion before.
Which is why, also, “starfish” is not wrong, altho we marine biologists like “seastar” better- the “fish” in pre-scientific times meant “animal that lived in the ocean”, so then “fish”, altho no longer correct in these post-linnaean times- was originally so, and not named becuase sea-shore dwellers thought starfish had fins & scales.
AudreyK - I saw a documentary about the Hawaiian tsunamis about a year ago, and I agree with you wholeheartedly - there were some truly amazing stories among the survivors.
Daniel - No, I didn’t know that your degree was in marine biology (I usually see you discussing tax matters or religion on this board). I also did not say that these waves were ever thought to be caused by tides (please see above); I believe in the last thread you said that tsunamis were called tidal waves because they occurred in the tidal zone, and that’s just not accurate based on what we know now. Sorry if you read it before, but since you picked up the discussion here almost exactly where you left off in the other thread I assumed you didn’t see it.
There are certainly other terms in the geosciences that have fallen into disuse or been replaced as knowledge was gained (e.g., aulacogen, geosyncline, “Primary” and “Secondary” as divisions of geologic time). They’re dropped because the new terminology is more precisely defined, and so using the new term makes communication more exact and less open to interpretation.
Your example of starfish in marine biology is not really a good parallel because it’s a common name, and common names for critters can be different on a regional basis. That is why biologists have the Linnaean system of description. Geoscientists don’t have an alternate vocabulary in Latin or any other language, so the terms we have need to be as unambiguous as possible. Why is this so unacceptable to you?
About 10 years ago, a major tsunami hit the coast of Hokkaido, Japan, wiping almost half of a small town right off the map. Over 100 people were killed, but many more were able to reach safety because of the advance warnings.
More detailed info (and some cool photos) of this incident are in Scientific American, issue… AUUGGH!!! My gf threw out all my back issues! Anyway, it was one of the 1999/2000 issues. The cover story was “Tsunami!” and had a drawing of a huge wave breaking.
So the Flores tsunami–they didn’t have any warnings. Two minutes after the initial shock, sploosh. Shall we extrapolate this to the northern end of the San Andreas Fault, up by Shelter Cove? Glad I live in the Midwest. 
Tell you what, from now till the end of time I’ll not question a single thing you say about taxes/accounting if you’ll please stop telling people it’s okay to use inappropriate terms for geologic phenomena.
Anyway, it was one of the 1999/2000 issues. The cover story was “Tsunami!” and had a drawing of a huge wave breaking.