HR: 09:00h
AN: S51C-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Tsunami awareness saves Solomon Islanders on 1 April 2007
AU: * Fritz, H M
EM: fritz@gatech.edu
AF: Georgia Institute of Technology, 210 Technology Circle, Savannah, GA 31407, United States
AU: Kalligeris, N
EM: nkalligeris@isc.tuc.gr
AF: Technical University of Crete, Department of Environmental Engineering, Chanea, 73100, Greece
AB: On April 1, 2007 at 20:39:56 UTC (local time: UTC+11), a magnitude Ms 8.1 earthquake occurred 50 km off the New Georgia Islands in the Solomon Sea generating a locally focused tsunami striking more than 300 coastal communities in the Solomon Islands. A reconnaissance team deployed within one week investigated 65 coastal settlements on 13 remote Islands and measured run-up heights of 12 m, local flow depths of 5 m as well as tectonic uplift up to 3.6 m and subsidence down to -1.5m. This South Pacific archipelago's worst disaster since WWII resulted in 52 confirmed death and 36'000 directly affected – roughly half of these numbers are children. The ground shaking pinned people to the ground and palm trees bounced back and forth with leafs touching the ground. The ancestral heritage "run to high ground after an earthquake" passed on to younger generations by survivors of a smaller 1952 tsunami triggered an immediate spontaneous self evacuation, which dramatically reduced the death toll in the small evacuation window of a few minutes between the end of the ground shaking and the onslaught of the tsunami. The survivors remained traumatized by the tsunami, afraid of the sea and living in evacuation camps on the hills illustrating the importance of community-based education and awareness programs.
DE: 4564 Tsunamis and storm surges
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting