Science Facts About Tsunami
If they’re lucky, the closest humans will ever come to a tsunami is in the legendary artwork of Hokusai, the world-renowned artist who rendered the tsunami in the wood block painting, The Great Wave (also titled The Breaking Wave off Kanagawa). In the mid 1800s painting, the tsunami dwarfs the monumental Mt. Fujiyama, as it almost obliterates the small humans in normal swift boats (called Oshiokuribune) that here are suspended, inert, static against the overpowering tsunami.
The daunting force is strikingly beautiful in Hokusai’s work, but in actuality is not regarded so pretty by those impacted by its terror, its power, and its suddenness.
SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION
In scientific terms, a tsunami, also known as a seismic sea wave and not to be confused with the term “tidal wave” (which is just normal wave activity), occurs when an undersea earthquake (NOT the tides) triggers the “sudden dropping or rising of a section of the sea floor,” subsequently creating one or more abnormally huge waves. Other intense seismic activity can cause a tsunami, such as undersea landslides.
GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
In geographic terms, the tsunami coming from the Japanese term, which translates as “harbor wave,” may be--according to experts at Houghton Mifflin’s Geology Link—“as much as 30 meters high and 200 kilometers long, may move as fast as 250 kilometers per hour, and may continue to occur for as long as a few days.”
THE ASIAN TSUNAMI CRISIS
In human terms, thousands of lives are taken, properties demolished, and businesses (such as harbor-front shops and industries, hence the name “harbor wave”) halted. The Indian Ocean tsunami—known as the Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake--in 2004 claimed 283,100 lives. According to one reporter, the tsunami was generated in the Indian Ocean north of Simeiulue Island, striking the coastal regions of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South India, and Thailand, and reaching the shores as far away as Port Elizabeth in South Africa (8,000 miles away!) and six other countries with waves of up to 100 feet.
PROTECTION AND WARNING INFORMATION
Opinions vary, of course, on what could have been done in those fifteen or thirty minutes before the 2004 disaster. One expert notes that while earthquakes cannot be predicted, per se, they can be “pinpointed,” and with the “appropriate equipment in place” and an advanced warning system, those stunned into immobility might have been able to temporarily relocate in advance.
Watchdog stations the world over do exist (and have for almost fifty years in some instances), and might help to prevent maybe not the devastation but at least the deaths. Such stations exist in Alaska, at the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center (ATWC), located in Palmer, Alaska; at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC), located in Honolulu, Hawaii; and tsunami protection plans exist in many locations, such as the Provincial Emergency Program of British Columbia, which advances guidelines for protecting against a tsunami and posts Tsunami Hazard Zone signs accordingly.
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