[EllaMinnow]

If the blue area is a land mass, wouldn't it still be visible in the 3rd photo?

[Lokibob]

I think the camera panned to the left of the photo. Look at the rock in the forground that comes into the picture.

[EternalVigilance]

The photographer has shifted quite a bit to the left by the third pic. You'll notice the boats are different. That's why the hills are out of the shot.

[dead]

If the blue area is a land mass, wouldn't it still be visible in the 3rd photo?

The perspective keeps following the woman as she moves out and to the left.

The hills are still there, they’re just no longer in the shot.

[nhoward14]

The photographer panned left where the mountain is not in frame. Notice the position of the white raft in the foreground.

[Robert A Cook PE]

White "line" is the wave" coming in.

Blue "outline" is the hills on the other side of the water.

[bibarnes]

The picture in question is from a different angle. The large blue mass in the background is definitely a land mass. A tsunami starts out in deep water and will travel at over 500MPH as it gets to shallow water the bottom of the wall of water starts to slow down (friction) the top keeps going. The top will slow at a slower rate than the bottom, this is what causes the water to recede from the shoreline. The greater the recession the larger the wave coming behind it. By the time it reaches shore it is probably going about 35MPH. Still too fast to out run.

I wonder if going out towards it and diving into the middle would help??? We used to do that with regular waves to avoid getting bounced around. The problem is that this wave is a couple of hundred feet in width.

The best thing is when the water starts to recede and you are in the Pacific is to beat feet in the other direction as fast as you can go and look for high ground.

An interesting fact I heard was that there are no wild animals dead. Even in a zoological park all the animals survived from elephants to rabbits.

[SuziQ]

If the blue area is a land mass, wouldn't it still be visible in the 3rd photo?

The view of the photographer has moved over to the left and tightened up. You can see the direction in which the woman is running and the photographer seems to have followed her motions toward her group. I pray some of them made it, but I'm not hopeful.

[RedWhiteBlue]

If the blue area is a land mass, wouldn't it still be visible in the 3rd photo?

If you look in the first two photos, there is a yellow inflatable raft visible in the distance on the left side of the picture (in the middle of the left edge). Also, you cannot see the people that the woman is trying to reach. In the third picture, the woman has passed that raft and it sits in the bottom right portion of the picture, but you can now see those she was desparately trying to reach. She ran to the left, and the photographer shifted to the left as well, so we can no longer see the land mass.