From the May 1999 Scientific American Magazine | 0 comments

TSUNAMI! ( Preview )

Its awesome fury cannot be diminished, but lessons learned from a rash of disasters this decade--and a new way to track these killer waves--will help save lives

By Frank I. Gonz�lez

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May
1999 Issue
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The sun had set 12 minutes earlier, and twilight was waning on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. It was July 17, 1998, and another tranquil Friday evening was drawing to a close for the men, women and children of Sissano, Arop, Warapu and other small villages on the peaceful sand spit between Sissano Lagoon and the Bismarck Sea. But deep in the earth, far beneath the wooden huts of the unsuspecting villagers, tremendous forces had strained the underlying rock for years. Now, in the space of minutes, this pent-up energy violently released as a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. At 6:49 p.m., the main shock rocked 30 kilometers (nearly 19 miles) of coastline centered on the lagoon and suddenly deformed the offshore ocean bottom. The normally flat sea surface lurched upward in response, giving birth to a fearsome tsunami.

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