Tsunamis – In the US?

music
ambience: underwater earthquake

Tsunamis – like the one that devastated parts of southeast Asia, can occur on any coastal area, including the United States. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Gerard Fryer is an associate geophysicist and tsunami Researcher at the University of Hawaii.

“Hawaii is basically the tsunami capital of the world, and the reason is that the great trenches of the Pacific Ocean produce big earthquakes, then the earthquakes produce tsunamis. And those tsunamis are all aimed pretty much at Hawaii because Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific. Not only that, the islands are made of big volcanoes, and those big volcanoes have their own earthquakes. And they have landslides, and those too can produce tsunamis.”

But Hawaii isn’t the only region in the US that’s susceptible to tsunamis.

“The most dangerous area is probably the Pacific Northwest Oregon, Washington, and northern California, where there is a zone of earthquakes immediately offshore, which produced a massive earthquake in the year 1700, probably about a magnitude nine. And that caused a tsunami that washed up on the immediate shoreline. The troubling thing about events like that is that from the earthquake to the time the tsunami runs ashore is only about 20 minutes. The warning then for people along the coast is the shaking of the ground. Fortunately, it’s not a shaking that you can ignore. If you imagine the ground shaking so strongly that you have difficulty standing, then as soon as the ground stops shaking, you should walk inland. All you need to do is walk because you have a full 20 minutes from the time it started, and you only need to go inland about a quarter or a half a mile. But you’ve go to get moving right away.”

Tsunamis - In the US?

What regions in the US are most susceptible to tsunamis?
Air Date:08/27/2008
Scientist:
Transcript:

music
ambience: underwater earthquake

Tsunamis - like the one that devastated parts of southeast Asia, can occur on any coastal area, including the United States. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Gerard Fryer is an associate geophysicist and tsunami Researcher at the University of Hawaii.

"Hawaii is basically the tsunami capital of the world, and the reason is that the great trenches of the Pacific Ocean produce big earthquakes, then the earthquakes produce tsunamis. And those tsunamis are all aimed pretty much at Hawaii because Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific. Not only that, the islands are made of big volcanoes, and those big volcanoes have their own earthquakes. And they have landslides, and those too can produce tsunamis."

But Hawaii isn't the only region in the US that's susceptible to tsunamis.

"The most dangerous area is probably the Pacific Northwest Oregon, Washington, and northern California, where there is a zone of earthquakes immediately offshore, which produced a massive earthquake in the year 1700, probably about a magnitude nine. And that caused a tsunami that washed up on the immediate shoreline. The troubling thing about events like that is that from the earthquake to the time the tsunami runs ashore is only about 20 minutes. The warning then for people along the coast is the shaking of the ground. Fortunately, it's not a shaking that you can ignore. If you imagine the ground shaking so strongly that you have difficulty standing, then as soon as the ground stops shaking, you should walk inland. All you need to do is walk because you have a full 20 minutes from the time it started, and you only need to go inland about a quarter or a half a mile. But you've go to get moving right away."