Posted on 12/30/2004 9:02:59 AM PST by M 91 u2 K
You could not evacuate, but you don't need to. You can move tens of thousands of people to higher ground- get away from the shore and several stories high and you'd have a much better chance than down by the docks, in a subway, or just on the street. Lower floors would take damage, mostly broken glass, but it would take a much bigger wave than 30 feet to knock down a steel-framed building.
We used to have a Civil Defense program with coordinators and shelters and volunteers and training and supplies, for nuclear war, but it was also useful for natural disasters like tsunamis, floods, and the like. We gave it up long ago (a treaty with the Soviets I think).
If you had 5,000 CD trained people, and each coralled a thousand people into safer zones, that's lots of people off the street. Perfect, no, but would it have saved lots of lives in India? You bet.
Given how much more tectonically active the Pacific is, I'd think we ought to make sure the west coast is protected first... but maybe it already is.
You'd see that sucker for a long time before it hit!
We could also be hit by a meteor.
"Strong winds frequently produce seiches on large lakes, but most are rather small in size — less than 30 cm (a foot) high — and go unnoticed amidst the general surface wave motions. However, during severe storm conditions, water-level differences greater than 5 metres (16 feet) have been observed between opposing lakeshores. Large seiches (i.e, greater than one metre (3 ft)) occur in the Great Lakes basin every year, usually from May to September. The Great Lake most affected by seiches is Lake Erie because it is the shallowest and its basin is often aligned with storm wind directions. One passing storm set up a seiche in 1979 that resulted in a water-level difference of 4.3 metres (14 feet) between Toledo and Buffalo." source
PS- Spent plenty o' time seichin' on Lake Michigan as a yute.
Natural and man-made "ocean-breaks" muffle the effects of these kinds of oceanic disturbances. Cities on deeper coastal shelfs that lack these kinds of breakers are hence more at risk. Anyone know off-hand which these are? Florida seems to come to mind....
I am stationed right here in Norfolk. As congested as this area is, we would be in a traffic jam on I-64 just before we are swept away.
A'hem You meant to say perhaps, enormous waves?
My mistake, you must have meant 'erroneous', as in wandering...I usually define it as 'mistaken'.
Have you heard any damage reports from those?
My solution is to permanently "station" (ok, intern if you will) all of the damn geologists (coincidently putting in their two cents worth right now) on the major coastlines of America.....put their A$$es on the line and they might sing a different tune.
Mother Nature is Mother Nature --she's not liberal or conservative and doesn't give a damn --things get sorted out in the end.
Thanks.
Bad spell check selection
My bad.
One problem is there seems to be an obsession with this exceedingly unlikely but really dramatic things; Yellowstone Caldera, La Palma collapsing, etc....
And things that are not only likely, but PROBABLE in the next few decades...a magnitude 7-7.5 earthquake on the Hayward Fault in Oakland and Berkeley, or in Salt Lake City...or in any of a number of other places...that would kill 5,000+, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and make 9/11 look like a joke...are basically ignored.
Got that right, I'd be lucky to even get off base.
Geologist steal your girlfriend or something?
I haven't heard anything about the rigs. My inclination is to think that they're okay since these tsunamis seem to become destructive only at the shoreline.
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