I see you're back at it. At this point I'm positive you realize that you're wrong and are just to stubborn to admit it. Here again is your 500 foot Tsunami wave off in the distance in a photo taken a year earlier.
Posted on 12/30/2004 7:06:00 AM PST by dead
Look at post #303.
BTTT
That's true only in the open sea. The wave is quite modest in height, and even small craft can deal with it.
Only when it approaches shore and trades kinetic energy for height, does it slow down to 50-100 mph, depending on the nature of the last mile of sea floor before reaching shore.
Possibly in some cases. I suppose it depends on where you were. There was an article in the Washington Post by a reporter who was swimming in the ocean when the Tsunami hit. The only sensation he had was the odd perspective of seeing the coastline going down as the water rose. He was thrown about some but he managed to crawl into an anchored rowboat and survived fine. His wife on shore grabbed a rope tied to a tree and managed to pull herself up and out of the water.
I see you're back at it. At this point I'm positive you realize that you're wrong and are just to stubborn to admit it. Here again is your 500 foot Tsunami wave off in the distance in a photo taken a year earlier.
Take a look at the photo below and compare it to the photo I posted above. Do you still think that's the wave?
Who knows. Maybe one or all of those family members survived. I've read all the posts on this thread and it looks like the best course of action is to grab something that floats and hang on and PRAY! I feel so sorry for those who perished and those who lost loved ones. The videos are shocking to watch. The one that particularly made an impression was shot from inside a building and you see nothing but deep, churning, BLACK water surging past. I cannot imagine the horror of it.
Yes. If you're in deep enough water to begin with, you aren't swamped by a big incoming wave. The guy in question was swimming around some island small enough 1) for a WP reporter to swim around, and 2) for a WP reporter's brother to own. I think he was smart and cool-headed, but also lucky he wasn't in a really wrong situation.
Here I am, looking at these pictures yet again. More than any that I have seen the third picture breaks my heart. Do you, or anyone, know how long it takes, after the water goes out, for the tsunami to come back in?
I'm with you.
Look at the last photo. That shows her realizing that she can't get to her family before the wave does. Others have said it was her being exhausted, or showing frustration. IMO she is showing resignation and defeat.
Concern for her own survival was never a consideration. Her only thought was for her children. None of them understood what was happening when the water went out - the father and children followed it out in wonder. Then, when they finally realized that the incoming wave was a threat, it was too late for any of them save the mother, and she just ran for her children.
This set of picture troubled me all night. Even those familiar with earthquakes have trouble realizing the threat of tidal waves. See my post her about my mother surviving a tidal wave following the 1964 Alaskan earthquake: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1309724/posts?page=112#112
My mother grew up lived all her life within ten miles of the San Andreas fault - generally within 4-5 miles. And her mother, as a girl, was shaken out of bed in San Francisco by the 1906 earthquake.
The family in these photos had no chance whatever of survival when they did not immediately sprint for the trees when the water went out, and little chance even if they had. I've seen the videos of the tidal waves hitting this beach. The children were just too small to survive in that rough water, or climb the trees, and their parents would have clung to them until the end.
After reading to this point, I must interject that you are in my opinion a very foolish person, to compare a tsunami to your possible experience in Hawaiian waves. This is like saying since I have survived a bite from a poodle, I know the trick to surviving a mauling by 100 starving hyenas.
The period of a tsunami is measured in miles, there is no "back side" to the wave. This is like saying you would dive under an approaching flash flood in a canyon, and hold your breath and pop up.
Sorry fella, but strong swimmers can swim 1.5 to 2 MPH. Against a 30 knot tidal bore, tsunami or flash flood, this is nothing. You are a ragdoll in a torrent, carried where it will carry you. Up, down, around. You are at the mercy of the wave.
As far as tossing off anecdotal "my big wave stories" to establish bona fides, I've been in 50 foot waves. Hundreds of them! But they were harmless, post-storm mid ocean waves with 100s of yards between. Just rollers, enormous swells. I've also been in 15 foot waves in the ocean on sailboats, with square vertical faces which were totally terrifying. I know from waves.
A tsunami is not a "wave" in any sense you are spouting off nonsense about.
From the picture I posted in 288, it looks like the people who ran off the beach would have been able to run up a sharp rocky incline immediately. I would guess that, other than this poor family of six, everybody else on the beach survived OK. We can be sure the photographer did at least.
People did survive in boats offshore and underwater when the tsunami hit. You may not know as much as you think.
it looks like this is the FIRST wave ... in first-hand accounts, it sounds like the first wave was bad, but the second was the killer ... as high as 20-30 feet. And at that speed (some said high as 500 mph), took pretty much everything in its path.
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