Tsunami timelines

Citation

(2009), "Tsunami timelines", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2009.07318bab.003

Tsunami timelines

Article Type: News items From: Disaster Prevention and Management, Volume 18, Issue 2

The last time a tsunami the size of the 2004 Indian Ocean wave hit the Asian coast was at least 600 years ago, according to new research. Kent State University’s Katrin Monecke and and colleagues found that the most recent 35 meter (114 feet) tsunami in the region prior to 2004 occurred sometime between AD 1290 and AD 1400. Monecke’s team studied sand deposition on land near Aceh in northern Sumatra. The largest tsunami prior to 2004 that residents collectively remember was in 1904, devastating the west coast of Simeulue Island. The authors said the “paleotsunami record for northern Sumatra suggests that damage-causing tsunamis in Aceh recur infrequently enough for entire human lifetimes to typically elapse between them.” This poses a dilemma for balancing the risks of a tsunami against the advantages of living along the coast. Recollections of the 1904 Simeulue Island event led the island’s residents to flee to higher ground and escape the 2004 event. But because of the infrequency of the events on the mainland, this information was not available. The US Geological Survey says these issues are relevant in the USA, especially on the Pacific Coast: “In North America these findings are most relevant in the Cascadia region, which extends along the 700 miles of Pacific coast from southern British Columbia to northern California.

“Like Thailand and Aceh, this coast has a geologic history of catastrophic tsunamis hundreds of years apart. The 2004 tsunami offers lessons on how to save lives from these Cascadia tsunamis – in particular, knowing a tsunami’s natural warning signs and how to reach safety in time.”