TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Such Carnage is Hard to Believe!

Re: Such Carnage is Hard to Believe!

Marcus Didius Falco (falco_marcus_didius@yahoo.co.uk)
Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:43:56 -0500

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com commented on Re: Such Carnage is Hard to Believe!
on Date: 30 Dec 2004 11:53:38 -0800

> TELECOM Digest Editor wrote:

>> That disturbance of the earth over around s.e. Asia on Sunday has
>> certainly taken its toll.

> If such waves hit either the east or west coast of the U.S., how far
> inland would the destruction be? One mile? Ten miles? How much
> shoreline (ie length) would be affected?

> For example, say the wave were to hit Coney Island in Brooklyn NY,
> how much of Brooklyn would've been destroyed?

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was an interesting article in
> Yahoo News earlier today discussing this very topic. It appears there
> is an area fifty or a hundred miles in the Pacific Ocean roughly off
> the coast of San Jose/San Francisco which is very earthquake prone
> according to siesmologists. I guess it is just a matter of time. You
> may have also seen in the news that hungry crockodiles got washed
> ashore in the Indonesia area this week, and although the little guys
> do not go out of their way to attack/eat humans, they certainly will
> do so when they get aggravated/agitated enough to do so. PAT]

It's a simple matter of geography -- how flat is the coast. I used to
live in Brooklyn, about 3 miles from Jamaica Bay, and about 5 miles
from the sea. I was at the 20 foot contour on the map. In Maine the 20
foot contour may well be practically on the beach. Even in Staaten
Island (Richmond), New York City there are places where there are high
hills right at the beach. At a guess, a 20 foot wave would sweep most
coastal cities in the eastern US. Luckily, most of the Atlantic is not
seismically active. The Caribbean is active, however, and so is
Iceland.

The real question is whether there are two plates colliding under the
Atlantic: if there aren't, then major Tsunamis are unlikely.

The Pacific is subject to Tsunamis. There have been several reminders
of the Easter one in 1964 that sent 60 foot waves into
Alaska. (Luckily, much of the Alaskan coast is mountainous.)

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