Posted on 12/26/2004 9:53:01 AM PST by sully777
NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) - Powerful tsunamis that roared across southern Asia into the Indian Ocean Sunday smashed fishing boats and flooded low-lying areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles to the west.
At least one person was killed and others feared missing on Kenya's coast, where thousands of tourists are visiting for the Christmas holidays.
The surge of water also destroyed dozens of boats and forced authorities to close the beaches, police said.
The biggest earthquake in 40 years hit southern Asia and triggered a massive wall of water that raced across the Indian Ocean, bringing devastation and death to Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Nearly 8,000 were believed killed.
In countries stretching from the Horn of Africa, down to Tanzania and out into the Indian Ocean, lowland flooding and irregularly fast tidal changes were reported. Tourists and residents were told to stay away from the beaches.
In the Kenyan resort town of Malindi, at least one swimmer died and three others were believed drowned, District Commissioner Mobeya Mogaka said. It was not immediately clear whether the swimmer was Kenyan or a foreign visitor.
Dozens of fishing boats were smashed when the tidal surge struck Malindi, Mogaka said.
Earlier, resorts closed their beaches because of the unusual tidal movements.
"We have had four high tides and four low tides in the last six hours," a spokesman for the Turtle Bay resort in Malindi told Reuters.
FISH ON RUNWAY
On the semi-autonomous Tanzanian island archipelago of Zanzibar, guests at two beach hotels were moved to hotels further inland, officials said. Asian Quake, Tsunami Death Toll Approaches 9,500
Two U.S. Airlines' Woes Ground More Holiday Flights
USGS: Warnings Could Have Saved Thousands in Asia
MORE
In the Seychelles, at least nine people were reported missing after a 2-meter (6-foot) surge flooded low roads and knocked out power in hundreds of homes. At the airport, fire brigades were forced to wash dozens of fish off of the runway each time high tides sent water crashing onto the airfield.
The government declared Monday a public holiday to allow for a cleanup.
In Somalia, strong waves and winds capsized boats and kept fishermen in port.
"I do not know what to expect from the ocean," said a Somali fisherman in the coastal town of Adale, 35 miles north of Mogadishu.
Mauritius seemed largely untouched by the post-quake surge, although minor flooding struck one of the outlying islands in the archipelago, Rodrigues. On Madagascar and the Comoros Islands, residents had seen no ill effects.
Diego Garcia is almost flat across the island chain
Here are some pics from my website:
http://rescueattempt.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/iran14.jpg
http://rescueattempt.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/iran13.jpg
In Crichton's new book,
he describes how upheavals
on the ocean floor
can propagate far,
like from the South Pacific
clear to the West Coast . . .
I hope someobody
is checking for oddball waves
propagating east . . .
With the entire intelligent parts of the known world watching this, I suppose somebody is.
Don't you? ;)
Most of Indonesia actually was totally unaffacted by this (Indonesia is a really big place)...happen to know where?
I love the fact that you post exclusively in Haiku! It's great.
It's the weekend, and a long holiday weekend on top. Where is the tsunami projection map?
What accounts for the "spacing" in the time that the waves arrive onshore?
Here you go ...
Also, judging by some of these stories, the information that tsunamis can strike in multiple waves minutes or hours apart needs to be spread more widely so that less people get caught up gawking at the first wave's effects.
If it has already been done, could you kindly direct me towards it?
Many thanks!
Not only can we make intuitive knowledge judgements from sensory data and thereby guess at reality, but we can make an AutoCAD map of our sensory data and make judgements twice removed from reality.
Ben, which news oganization did you get that post from. Only journalists misuse the nomenclature "tidal wave".
I've seen Reuters and the BBC both stumbling and thrashing around with it.
"Diego Garcia is also having trouble with restless natives, stirred up by left-leaning organizations. "
The Natives were removed from Diego Garcia 30 years ago.
From the link: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/dg.html
Although Diego Garcia once had a small native population, the inhabitants, known as the Ilois, or the Chagossians, were forced to relocate (1967–1973) so that the island could be turned into a military base—over the strong protestations of other Indian Ocean islands, who objected to having cruise missiles as neighbors. Most of the displaced Ilois were agricultural workers and fisherman. Uprooted and robbed of their livelihood, the Ilois now live in poverty in Mauritius's urban slums, more than 1,000 miles from their homeland. A smaller number were deported to the Seychelles. In 2000, a British court ruled that the order to evacuate Diego Garcia's inhabitants was invalid, but the court also upheld the island's military status, which permits only personnel authorized by the military to inhabit the island. The Ilois sued the British government for compensation and the right to repatriation, but in Oct. 2003 a British judge ruled that although the Ilois had been treated "shamefully" by the government, their claims were unfounded. The Ilois are expected to appeal
I have been thinking a lot about Michael Crichton's new book "State of Fear" and what would happen with a west coast tsunami. Ironically, I was thinking of these things at about the time the earthquake happened. I was spending the late afternoon Saturday at Garrapata State Park, south of Carmel. I hiked down to the rocks next to the ocean to relax and watch the gray whales migrating. I'm closer to the waves than I should be, but keep a careful eye of where the water is landing. I was thinking if a tsunami that the book mentioned--or even a rogue wave came ashore, I was toast. I had no idea there really was a huge earthquake on the other side of the world causing tsunamis.
I was in Phuket and Phi Phi last month, but the only worry I had was the Muslim insurgents from Southern Thailand striking the tourist areas as JI did in Bali. I certainly would not have imagined a quake and tsunami.
Mt. Pinatubo exploded after a quake in the Philippines in 1990. I wonder if any volcanoes will be cued up to erupt now.
The Earth's crust is doing some relaxing. For the next month to six weeks, there will be strong (6.0+) earthquakes at far flung places. If I could predict which far flung places, I'd be a wonder. I'd guess Peru, Chile, African Rift Valley, Israel, Seattle, Tokyo, New Delhi, San Jose, and New Madrid.
Volcanoes? You can bet on that, but you cannot tell which volcanoes will blow. New volcanoes just might form. Some established active volcanoes will erupt. It is likely that some old dormant volcano will awaken. It is easy to make accurate predictions like this that are far too broad to be useful.
These things do go in clusters, but no one can predict how many events in this cluster or where those events will be located.
earlier, related topics, "Death toll now tops 11,500":
Tidal Waves Kill More Than 700 in Asia
yahoo/AP ^ | 12-26-04 | LELY T. DJUHARI
Posted on 12/26/2004 1:18:45 AM PST by sully777
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308542/posts
Tidal Waves Kill More Than 3,200 in Asia
(Update: Death toll now tops 11,500)
AP ^ | Sun, Dec 26, 2004
Posted on 12/26/2004 2:09:10 AM PST by Grzegorz 246
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308556/posts
Asian Tsunami Kills 12,300, Many More Homeless
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mymod/hdln/rt/sty/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20041226/ts_nm/quake_dc
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