Sunday 28 February 2010

Chile Earthquake - Tsunami

Following on from the devastating earthquake in Chile last week has been the risk of Tsunami across the Pacific. (A Tsunami being a large ocean wave – not necessary high - but a wave that might last 15 minutes rather than just a few seconds.) Hawaii and Easter Island were most at risk; apparently the tsunami wave wraps around an island so all that shores are inundated, not just the ones facing the wave. Very frightening.

It appears the threat has now passed.




After the Boxing Day Tsunami a better system of warnings was put in place by these chaps:-

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/

It’s an informative website and was updated regularly over the past few days allowing governments from Australia to Japan the time to steady themselves should the worst happen.

It’s worth a five minute read.

1 comment:

Swanage Coastguard said...

My sister in law lives in New Zealand, they went from low tide to high tide in less than an hour!