1755, Lisbon

Most Europeans do not worry about tsunami waves as much as those who live around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, but they should. On All Saint’s Day, 1755, a huge earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal, causing most stone buildings to collapse, including churches, monasteries, nunneries, and chapels, trapping the faithful inside the ruins, which votive candles quickly turned into burning pyres. Voltaire would write, “The sole consolation is that the Jesuit Inquisitors of Lisbon will have disappeared.” To add to the irony, among the few buildings safely left standing following the disaster were the lightly constructed wooden bordellos of the city. Most of Lisbon’s prostitutes but few of her nuns survived. Tsunami waves would not only kill thousands around Lisbon’s harbor but also travel south to Spain and North Africa, north to Ireland and Wales, and across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean, flooding the streets of Barbados.

The World’s Oldest Tsunami Victim at the Gateway to the Pacific—and Beyond

The 1998 Papua New Guinea tsunami was a significant puzzle for scientists who finally cracked the cause, but it also marks the most recent event of many that can be dated back to at least 6,000 years ago where the skull of the oldest tsunami victim in the world was found. Papua New Guinea was also the starting point for the most remarkable navigational feat in the world, with Polynesians moving rapidly east into the Pacific Ocean, their settlement of the region being punctuated by hiatuses caused by catastrophic tsunamis approximately 3,000, 2,000, and 600 years ago. It was on isolated Pacific islands that humans first came into contact with the deadly Pacific Ring of Fire. Settlement abandonment, mass graves, and cultural collapse mark their progress.

Strange, But True

There are many strange tales of tsunamis that do not fit into researchers’ simple understanding of these events. Intact whale skeletons nearly 150 ft up on top of a cliff, exploding geysers, ships sunk by asteroids, alcoholic beverages running riot through city streets, and the Allies’ development of a tsunami bomb during World War II that was considered equally important as their atomic program are all strange but true stories of the bizarre world of tsunamis. Although none of the events discussed in this chapter necessarily changed the world, they are interesting nonetheless and should change either how scientists search for past tsunamis or how scientists define them.

Introduction

Tsunamis affect people—that is why researchers study them and why the media tracks their paths of destruction. A devastating tsunami is usually an event that is so far beyond people’s life experiences that they often struggle to rationalize what they saw. The destruction that has been wrought on human communities over the millennia is reflected in stories passed down either through word of mouth or in the writings of experts and non-experts alike. With an unprecedented wealth of previously unpublished tsunami survivor stories, the Introduction outlines the human side of these catastrophic events and what they mean to people. The basics of the tsunami warning system are introduced, as are some of the cases discussed in the book.

Not Such a Good Friday for Alaska

This chapter presents a selection of amazing true stories collected through first-time video interviews covering the areas of Seward, Valdez, Cordova, Kodiak, Whittier, and other sites that were the hardest hit by the devastating 1964 Great Alaskan earthquake and tsunami, the second largest earthquake ever recorded. The chapter presents the story of a family hearing the tsunami coming and climbing onto a rooftop that they would ride upslope into the forest and survive. It also provides an account of the waves rolling into Seward and crushing huge oil tanks, with the water covered with oil catching fire and turning into a flaming tsunami. Stories of native fishermen at sea observing strange behavior by marine animals and even cows on Kodiak Island heading up into pasture following the earthquake only to be killed by the tsunami 30 minutes later after they had returned downhill are presented.

How Weird Squiggles Led from Sheaves of Rice to the Depth of the Seas

Through an amazing chain of events, the Japanese story of how a town squire sacrificed his wealth to save his villagers from a deadly tsunami is intricately woven together with how in 1855 Benjamin Franklin’s great grandson accurately determined the depth of the Pacific Ocean based on the travel time of this same tsunami from Japan to San Francisco, California. This scientific breakthrough would lead to the first known prediction of tsunami wave generation through earthquake detection yet would be ignored by official government agencies with tragic consequences. Immediately following the 1946 tsunami, the Commander of the Coast and Geodetic Survey ignorantly stated, “Less than one in one hundred earthquakes result in tidal waves and you don’t alert every port in the Pacific each time a quake occurs.”

The Case of the Disappearing Lighthouse

This chapter follows the course of the waves caused by the 1946 Aleutian earthquake, which ultimately resulted in the creation of the first official tsunami warning system, from their source in Alaska as they demolished a Coast Guard lighthouse, caused massive destruction and loss of life in Hawaii, and ultimately reached the shores of Antarctica. The chapter presents observations by mariners at sea off Alaska, Navy pilots flying over Hawaii, and a marine geologist in the Hawaiian Islands for the Bikini atomic bomb tests and firsthand accounts of amazing survival and tragic loss in Hawaii. In addition to the devastating tsunami, 1946 marked the year when scientists in Japan and the English-speaking world finally adopted the name “tsunami” for these events.

The Perils of Freshwater Tsunamis

Most people think that tsunamis happen in the sea, but huge events generated by landslides into lakes, rivers, and dams indicate otherwise. For example, during the 563 event in Lake Geneva, a massive fort and numerous towns and villages along its shores were destroyed. There were earlier tsunamis and there will doubtless be more in the future. Indeed, man-made lakes—reservoirs—also represent spectacular dam-building failures. The Vajont Dam in Italy is a story of human folly, a disregard for Nature’s warnings that led to the death of thousands of people downstream. Landslides fall into rivers and can also produce massive waves. New Zealand’s largest historical tsunami was caused by just such a scenario, and although no people died, it offers an ominous sign of what can happen around any water body, fresh or otherwise, in the world.

Tsunamis and the US Navy

This chapter presents the story of US Navy ships in the Virgin Islands following the Civil War. On November 18, 1867, a tsunami struck, destroying many of the ships; the events that unfolded are told in firsthand accounts. This tsunami would ultimately delay the purchase of the US Virgin Islands for half a century, thus focusing the US Navy on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with its own major consequences. Less than a year later, two more US Navy ships would be carried ashore by a tsunami, but this time on the coast of Peru. A Peruvian warship, the Americana, lost her captain and some 85 men, and the remaining crew broke into the liquor stores and became drunk. Meanwhile, the warship USS Wateree would lose only 1 sailor, end up permanently stranded on the beach, and eventually be sold to become a seaside hotel.

1960 Chile

The 1960 Chilean earthquake, the largest earthquake in recorded history, ruptured nearly 620 miles of seafloor, generated a tsunami well over 50 ft (15 m) high in Chile, and moved the entire country to the west in a matter of minutes as the ground shook. The tsunami following the earthquake caused Pacific-wide destruction. This chapter charts the progress of the tsunami across the Pacific Ocean, beginning with tsunami survivor stories from Chile and then moving to the Moai of Easter Island, bad decisions in Hawaii, and the unwelcome surprise of this distantly generated event for Japan. This was an ocean-wide disaster that provides important lessons regarding what happened in the past and what will happen in the future.