Biggest seismic event in 40 years Hereabouts, Boxing Day, (yesterday) is certain to be remembered for a sub-ocean seismic event near Aceh (Archei) northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The incident apparently happened just before 8am Perth time. The resultant shock waves spread across the Bay of Bengal and the northern Indian Ocean causing severe damage and loss of life from the tsunami effect.
Countries facing the Bay of Bengal appear to have been worst effected. Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Further west, the Islamic island republic known as the Maldives has been swamped. It seems certain that the Andaman and Nicobar island territories ceded to India have also suffered similarly. They are located in the Bay of Bengal.
The Australian territories of Cocos and Christmas Islands which are relatively close to, but south east of the epicentre, appear to have escaped damage, as has the north west coastline of Australia. This is lucky, because the Australian emergency authorities appear to have been caught napping. Well it was the Boxing Day holiday, and the headquarters are in Canberra. Bear in mind that at 9 on the Richter scale it was the world’s largest seismic event since 1964.
Vague news of the catastrophe began to filter in here via the media early yesterday afternoon. Aware of the geographic proximity of the event to Western Australia and the potential implications, I listened for official tsunami alerts on our local radio and TV but there were none as far as I know. This morning the Western Australian State Emergency service claims it sent an alert to its northwest contacts. Whether or not this filtered to the general population remains to be determined. Not much use reading about it in a newspaper the following day. So I suspect we were very lucky this time.
This morning the Australian media has recognised the event as a very big story. One suspects this is in part because a lot of Australians have chosen to spend their Christmas holidays at some of the popular resorts in the region. One of our sons has a friend who was to have gone to Sri Lanka, but he just heard that the family cancelled their plans at the last moment. A fortunate decision they won’t forget. There have been a lot of phone interviews this morning with Australians who had lucky escapes.
All of the effected countries have high populations, a great deal of poverty and a relatively poor emergency infrastructure. The Indonesian province of Aceh in northern Sumatra may be amongst the worst effected. A least 4,000 have reportedly died there. I would expect a great deal more. As well as being adjacent to the epicentre, the region has been a hotbed for Islamic separatism for few years. The Indonesian government has long blocked entry by humanitarian agencies to the region while it endeavours to bring matters under control in its inimitable way. Similarly contentious have been the coastal areas held by Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka. These were reportedly also badly effected by the tsunami.
I heard that in another basket-case country, Myanmar, (Burma) that the backwash of the tsunami surge has spread land mines through the beachfront debris. Plenty of victims to come there.
There have been numerous reports of the ocean receding a considerable distance before the first inundation. This happened at Aceh and reportedly left a lot of fish flapping. Villagers rushed out eagerly to collect them, and were of course overwhelmed by the tsunami. The waves varied in height. In some places they were several metres high, in others only a metre of so, but behind that metre was a huge mass of water which surged inland carrying everything that wasn’t tied down. There was a return surge in places too, and people and property were carried out to sea in many places. I have seen footage of downed coconut trees pointing out to sea, which suggests the return surge was very powerful.
In other places there was a succession of small waves over twenty minutes followed by a very large one. Not all the water receded quickly. This probably related to the topography. Flat lowlands invited flooding. The salt water inundation will probably impact on agriculture in some of these places. The tsunami also changed direction around headlands, moving into regions one might not have expected.
The media is now citing a total mortality figure of 12,000, with at least three quarters of a million people homeless. These figures are sure to rise. The Australian government has pledged ten million dollars worth of immediate aid. There seems to be a lot of conflicting reports. Now, at 11.30am on the following day, five Australians are officially missing.
© MMIV Paul R. Weaver.
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