“Racing At Jet Speed”: Millions Flee The Threat Of An Angry Higher Power – With Video
Feb 27, 2010 1 Comment ›› Pat Dollard
Russia, China, Japan, New Zelalnd, Australia, Phillipines order citizens to flee Pacific coasts ahead of deadly wave of unknowable magnitude.
WASHINGTON — A tsunami triggered by the powerful quake that rocked Chile was Saturday racing across the Pacific Ocean towards Hawaii and Asia at around 450 miles per hour, a quake expert said.
Estimating the depth of the wave’s water column to be around four kilometers (2.4 miles) on average, Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, calculated that at mid-ocean, the mass of water would be hurtling toward Hawaii at 200 meters per second, or 720 kilometers per hour (446 mph).
“Mid-ocean, the wave is traveling at around the speed of a jet plane,” Bilham told AFP.
“The amplitude of the wave is small when it’s mid-ocean, but it may rise to five to 10 meters when it reaches Japan or the Philippines,” he said.
A huge arc of nations around the Pacific, from New Zealand to Japan, have gone on tsunami alert, while sirens sounded warnings of destructive waves around Hawaii for the first time in 16 years.
Russia issues tsunami warning, launches evacuation
Updated at: 0630 PST, Sunday, February 28, 2010
MOSCOW: Russia has issued a tsunami warning after Saturday’s massive earthquake in Chile and launched evacuation in its Pacific peninsula of Kamchatka, officials said Sunday as quoted by a local news agency.
“We are expecting waves of up to two meters, which is a dangerous height, and so people are asked to evacuate from dangerous zones,” the Sakhalin island tsunami centre’s chief Tatyana Ivelskaya said.
According to Kamchatka officials, some 100 employees of Severo-Kurilsk port and fish factory were evacuated, and residents of five houses that could be struck by a tsunami would be transported to safe areas.
The 8.8-magnitude quake, which struck off the coast of Chile before dawn, killed more than 300 people and affected as many as two million as it left a trail of destruction through a swath of central Chile.
One of the largest earthquakes on record, it sent tsunami waves crashing into coastal areas of the South American nation of 16 million people, and then roaring across the Pacific Ocean as far as New Zealand and Japan.
OKYO — Japan issued its first “major” tsunami warning in nearly two decades Sunday, evacuating hundred of thousand of residents and cautioning that waves as high as 10 feet could hit northern coastal areas following a massive earthquake in Chile.
The 8.8-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that swept across the Pacific on Sunday, but little damage was being reported as nations evacuated their coastlines well in advance of the waves.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency said the tsunami alert applied to its entire Pacific coast, but said the waves were expected to be biggest in the north.
In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano told a hastily called news conference that the government has set up a crisis control task force to deal with the possible tsunami danger.
“We will do our utmost to minimize the possible tsunami damage,” Hirano said.
Towns along northern coasts issued evacuation orders to hundreds of thousands of residents, and authorities urged people close to the shore to head for higher ground.
Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said Sunday morning that a tsunami could hit the island’s eastern coast. It gave no estimate on wave size but warned the public against going near the sea. The Philippines was also watching for waves.
Earlier Sunday in Tonga, where up to 50,000 people fled inland hours ahead of the tsunami, the National Disaster Office had reports of a wave up to 6.5 feet high hitting a small northern island, deputy director Mali’u Takai said.
“That wave is reported in the Vava’u outer islands,” he told The Associated Press, adding that earlier reports were that a nearly 3.5 feet wave had hit the northern group. There were no initial indications of damage.
Nine people died in Tonga last September when the Samoa tsunami slammed the small northern island of Niuatoputapu, wiping out half of the main settlement.
In Samoa, where 183 people died in the tsunami five months ago, thousands of people Sunday morning remained in the hills above the coasts on the main island of Upolu, but police said there were no reports of waves or sea surges hitting the South Pacific nation.
In Fiji by midmorning Sunday, disaster management office duty officer Anthony Blake said no unusual wave activity had been reported.
“There has been no surges at all,” he told AP, but people who evacuated from coastal towns and villages should stay away from beaches for at least more six hours.
Blake said coastal evacuations had taken place on Vanua Levu, Fiji’s second biggest island, and in the Lau and Lomaiviti island groups. About a third of Fiji’s 800,000 people live in those areas, he said.
Police and emergency services are on alert for waves of between 1.9 and 7.5 feet on the northern and eastern islands of the archipelago.
In Japan, a tsunami of up to 9.8 feet was expected to hit the northern prefectures of Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi at about 1:30 p.m. local time. Waves of about 3.2 feet were expected in the Tokyo Bay area at about 2:30 p.m. local time, the Meteorological Agency said.
The town of Kamaishi in Iwate prefecture (state), where the major tsunami is expected, issued evacuation orders to its 14,000 coastal residents through its community radio system, urging them to go to designated community centers and other facilities, according to town official Masashi Suenaga.
The issuance of the major tsunami alert is the first for Japan since July 1993, when a tsunami triggered by a major earthquake off Japan’s northern coast killed more than 200 people on a small island of Okushiri.
Villagers living close to the Philippines’ eastern coast were advised to move to higher ground, said Renato Solidum, the chief of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. He said a wave of about 3.2 feet high could hit early in the afternoon.
“We’re not expecting any huge tsunami so we’re just urging everybody to take precautions,” Solidum told The Associated Press.
On New Zealand’s Chatham Islands earlier Sunday, officials reported a wave measured at 6.6 feet.
Oceanographer Ken Gledhill said it was typical tsunami behavior when the sea water dropped a meter off North Island’s east coast at Gisborne then surged back.
Several hundred people in the North Island coastal cities of Gisborne and Napier were evacuated from their homes and from camp grounds, while residents in low-lying areas on South Island’s Banks Peninsula were alerted to be ready to evacuate.
In the Cook Islands the police issued an all-clear midmorning Sunday after the tsunami caused a minor tidal surge of a few centimeters.
In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology reported a tsunami measuring 1.6 feet off Norfolk Island, about 1,000 miles northeast of Sydney.
There were no immediate reports of damage and no evacuations were ordered. A tsunami warning remained in effect by late morning Sunday for much of Australia’s east coast — from Queensland state in the north to Tasmania in the south.
“Do not go to the coast to watch the tsunami,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s alert said. “Check that your neighbors have received this advice. Boats in close should return quickly if possible. Boats in deep water should stay offshore until further advised.”
