tsunami (Page 5)

The earthquake of 1906 devastated San Franciso on April 18, and on its one-hundredth anniversary, the town has been remembering the devastation it caused. The Indonesian tsunami, caused by an earthquake deep beneath the ocean floor, arrived suddenly in December of 2004. Now it looks like both of them may happen again.

Larry O’Hanlon writes in Discovery News that mysterious rumblings have been detected inside and above the San Andreas fault. Seismologists aren?t sure if these are a warning that a major quake is on the way. The noises “just rumble and stop” then this sequence repeats, according to seismologist Robert Nadeau.
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Could Nevada or California experience a tsunami as bad asthe one that struck Indonesia in December? Evidence showsthat approximately every 3,000 years, the seismic faultsunderneath Lake Tahoe produce an earthquake with the powerto push the ground up or down by 10 feet or more. Scientistsare trying to figure out when the last one happened, so theycan predict when it will happen again.

When geophysicist Graham Kent dug through the sediments atthe bottom of the lake down to the bedrock underneath, hefound evidence of three major faults that extend beyond thelake, onto the land. This means a major quake in the areamay some day generate a tsunami three stories tall.
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On March 17, scientists published a paper in Nature Magazineon the effects of the December 25 earthquake and tsunami inIndonesia. Eleven days later, another earthquake struck,almost exactly where they said it would, which producedanother gigantic tsunami wave. Unknowncountry.com posted anews story that made thesameprediction. The final death toll from December?s quakenumbers over 300,000 people, most of whom were women andchildren. The second tsunami, which was caused by an 8.7quake, killed only around 2,000 people, probably becausethey were warned. Anything with a magnitude above 7.5 isconsidered a giant earthquake. The Christmas quake had amagnitude of 9.3
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Thousands may have died in the region of a new Indian Oceanearthquake, that measured 8.7 on the Richter scale. Thequake did not generate any tsunamis, but there has beenextensive damage to structures in the area, especially on the hard-hit island of Nias near the quake’s epicenter, andone to two thousand people are feared dead.The quake took place at 11:09 AM Eastern Standard Time,which is 11:09 PM in the quake area. It shookbuildings from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok.
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