The reason it strikes me is that I did this around 2010, which would have been after the 2004 Indian Ocean event, but before the Japan 2011 tsunami.
My understanding of what a Tsunami could do was oddly skewed from my initial view point (2004) to my understanding now after the Japan 2011 event.
The footage of the Indian Ocean tsunami was very different from that of the Japan event, in my opinion.
Much of the footage of the Indian ocean wave had a lot of tourist and rural seacoast village/town viewpoints. Places where the sea looked like it belonged. When the waves came in, it was easy to see people mistaking it initially for a non-catastrophic even.
In Japan, it was different.
First, there was a lot more clear, well shot footage available in the Japan wave, from more angles. Secondly, it was often in the heart of an industrial country.
The ocean didn't belong there.
There were rows of neatly parked cars in well ordered, painted and maintained parking lots. Well made reinforced concrete seawalls. Earthquake resistant structures. Industrial buildings and all the infrastructure that goes with it. It was near the pinnacle of civilization's attempt to live safely in a dangerous natural environment. Wow, when you think about it. Typhoons. Earthquakes. Volcanoes.
Tsunamis.
And here they were. And when we watched in all these different angles of good quality, steady video, we saw a monster of immense power engulf all these bulwarks of man, It just boiled in like "The Blob" in that cheesy b-grade movie.
Except this wasn't campy. It was horrifying to watch on video. Like a living thing, the enormous mass of liquid came in over the top, around the sides, and underneath everything. It dug into the earth and undercut the very foundations of all those earthquake-resistant buildings, devouring the earth underneath until the very structures committed suicide, their own unstable bones collapsing in on themselves.
It churned and boiled, getting bigger and bigger, more swollen with debris until it reached a point of achieving a destructive viscosity, beginning to turn into a form of diluted sludge, where the sludge is debris, cars, telephone poles, and nearly every facet of an industrialized society. Even large ships. It gained more and more mass, until nothing could withstand before it. It ran out of energy when the laws of nature told it that was as far as it could go. It ran out of steam. But most eerily disturbing to me was the cars.
The cars in the parking lots. Trucks driving down a busy city street. You had to wonder...did they see? Then, when you could see their brake lights go on you knew they were aware. Were they watching in a detached astonishment, or were they frantically searching for a road, any road that would take them away?
Then, as you watch the cars float up and begin moving, you can occasionally see the shadowy figures of human beings inside. Japanese humans trapped in their cars. And when you see them wash into a wall of debris piling against a bridge, you know in your heart, they are doomed. As they get swallowed up and washed under, it isn't too hard to figure how that is going to end. Unbelievable.
Wow. You have a gift with words!