Valdivia, Chile, May 22, 1960 Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. What will it take to be ready for the next major tsunami? Lituya Bay a few weeks after the 1958 tsunami. [8][9], Lituya Bay is a fjord located on the Fairweather Fault in the northeastern part of the Gulf of Alaska. The Cascadia fault has experienced at least seven quakes in the I deal with the rocky road to our modern understanding of earth.

It island's active volcano has the potential to give way in a future eruption. Anchored in a cove near the west side of the entrance of the bay, Bill and Vivian Swanson were on their boat fishing when the earthquake hit:[10], With the first jolt, I tumbled out of the bunk and looked toward the head of the bay where all the noise was coming from. The epicenter of the quake was at latitude 58.37° N, longitude 136.67° W near the Fairweather Range, 7.5 miles (12.1 km) east of the surface trace of the Fairweather fault, and 13 miles (21 km) southeast of Lituya Bay. It seems to be solid, but it was jumping and shaking like crazy. [5] The shock was felt in southeastern Alaskan cities over an area of 400,000 square miles (1,000,000 km2), as far south as Seattle, Washington, and as far east as Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.[11]. (The Sunmore has been reported missing by the Coast Guard and a search was underway. Where did the Indian Ocean tsunami aid money go. It is a T-shaped bay with a width of 2 miles (3 km) and a length of 7 miles (11 km). [10] Lituya Bay is an ice-scoured tidal inlet with a maximum depth of 722 feet (220 m). Little scientific evidence for this theory existed until recently, when Scientists have found remnants of the catastrophe in some of the

In some respects, it created a similar reaction to that which would have occurred if an asteroid had fallen into the water. Source: SirGorg, Flappiefh, Creative Commons CC0 License. He is a retired Coast Guardsman who was once stationed at Yakutat. Canary Islands, Future Note the extent of the non-forested areas of land lining the shore of the bay, which marks the approximate reach of the tsunami's runup. geologists finally uncovered proof that the tsunami's waves were massive when This page was last edited on 2 November 2020, at 15:49. of rock in the case of Lituya—could produce a giant wave. Fishing boats along the coast clustered together during the day, apparently waiting to be sure the tremors were over. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. The biggest tsunami in present times struck at Lituya Bay, Alaska on July 9, 1958. landslide on the island of La Palma in the Canaries.

[9] The rockfall also caused air to be dragged along due to viscosity effects, which added to the volume of displacement, and further impacted the sediment on the floor of the bay, creating a large crater.
Krakatoa produced the first tsunami

Howard Ulrich, a fisherman visiting Lituya Bay with his 8-years-old son that day, at first heard a loud rumbling noise from up at the head of the bay, followed a moment later by what he describes as "an atomic explosion."

A decade on, the shockwaves are still being felt, Waves taller than coconut trees, bodies in the ocean and aid drops: pictures by child survivors of the Boxing Day tragedy, Rob and Paul Forkan were left orphans by the 2004 disaster. total lives lost. experts. The Swansons said after they were flown here and hospitalized today that they were asleep when the quake hit and went to the pilot house to look around. tremor. A huge glacier reaches right down to shore at that spot, and that quake just ripped a huge chunk out of the river of ice and tumbled it into the water," he said. time. [11], The major earthquake that struck on the Fairweather Fault had a moment magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum perceived intensity of XI (Extreme) on the Mercalli intensity scale. released enough energy, scientists estimate, to boil 40 gallons of water for Nothing but picnic plates were found floating in the water after the suction and severe turbulence subsided.

powerful underwater earthquake triggered it. As they glanced toward three glaciers at the head of the bay, they could see ice and debris being sheared off the faces "like a gravel truck dumping a full load. oldest rocks on Earth—in Western Australia's Pilbara Block and in South recently conducted at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found no evidence The areas of destroyed forest along the shorelines... [+] are recognizable as the light areas rimming the bay. The debris released was estimated by the study as being between 5 and 10 times the volume of the initial rockfall, a bulking ratio comparable with that of other events such as the September 2002 Kolka-Karmadon rock ice slide (estimated ratio between 5 and 10), the November 1987 Parraguirre landslide (est.
The other two victims were Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tibbles, employes of the Civil Aeronautics Administration station at Yakutat. © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. The western flank of the

largest in thousands of years. Instead, the megatsunami was caused by a massive and sudden impulsive impact when about 40 million cubic yards of rock several hundred meters above the bay was fractured from the side of the bay, by the earthquake, and fell "practically as a monolithic unit" down the almost vertical slope and into the bay. The dead were three picknickers sucked into the sea when the quake sheared off the tip of an island in Yakutat Bay, about 200 miles northwest of here. Minor damage was reported throughout the area, but it apparently was most severe along the 100-mile stretch of the Gulf of Alaska coastline between Lituya Bay and the fishing village of Yakutat. Giant Waves at Lituya Bay, Alaska Aleutian Islands, Alaska, April 1, 1946 All rights reserved. It [10] The two arms that create the top of the T-shape of the bay are the Gilbert and Crillon inlets and are a part of a trench on the Fairweather Fault. "They tell me they haven't found the Sunmore. That went on for a little while—it's hard to tell just how long—and then suddenly the glacier dropped back out of sight and there was a big wall of water going over the point. allowing it to pummel Hawaii with 60-foot waters more than five hours after it

The glacier, lightened, rose before stabilizing in the water, and a large amount of trapped infill (subglacial and proglacial sediment) that was trapped under the glacier and had already been loosened by the earthquake was released as an almost immediate and many times larger second slide. Witnesses to the tragedy, Yakutat postmaster John Williams and his wife, Dora, said about 500 yards of the south end of Khantaak Island heaved 20 feet into the air and then fell into the bay. Local legends record even earlier events, predating modern explorers and scientists by centuries. Pacific, where most occur. seawater more than 140 feet high and carrying 600-ton blocks of coral wiped out It also caused a rockfall in Lituya Bay that generated a wave with a maximum height of 1,720 feet – the world’s largest recorded tsunami.


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