Tsunami effects on west coast

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The Today show coverage this morning, said that as many as 6 boats capsized. The damage they were able to show wasn't even close to the 600 mph tsunami, or the 6 foot wall of water, that they predicted. Still bad for those involved, but nothing like the hype they were giving it yesterday for the west coast of the US. The coverage of the damage in Japan is amazing to watch.
 
National news networks don't have a good handle on local events and, at best, rely on 2nd or 3rd hand reports.

I didn't see any hype on our local news, and the local emergency alert systems weren't activated. However, if San Francisco Bay had seen the 6-8 foot surges that Santa Cruz saw, and if they continued up river, I have no doubt that we'd have experienced some damage. There's no way our boat dock could have sustained an 8 foot surge, although it was rebuilt to a much higher spec than the original, and our boat would have broken away, probably taking out several neighbor's boats and docks.

Timing is everything and, if the surge occurred at high tide and came up river, we'd have experienced some serious damage in the house. This would also have been a good test for our 100-year levee, although I suspect that a number of levees between us and San Francisco would have gone first.

We saw no need to panic, but kept monitoring what was happening at the coast. One of the local TV channels had their helicopter providing live video all morning. With a surge of less than a foot through the Golden Gate, we knew we'd be just fine.

What the west coast saw is obviously nothing compared with events in Japan, the full extent of which are not yet known. But, if you're the one guy who's life was lost ....
 
Public safety officials in Oregon were very pleased with the emergency response planning which went off without a hitch.  Local TV stations were not as hyper as some of the networks and provided vital information during a very uncertain time. 

We will have tsunamis in the future and we will have earthquakes, so it's difficult to understate the urgency of such unpredictable events without reverting to what might seem like hype and hoopla.

Margi
 
Tom, you said it all...

There's no way our boat dock could have sustained an 8 foot surge, although it was rebuilt to a much higher spec than the original, and our boat would have broken away, probably taking out several neighbor's boats and docks.
Click to expand...

  Imagine several good-size boats tied to a pier.  There goes to pier with a 6-8 foot swell.

Even smaller boats, tied up, using 1'2"- 3/4" in mooring lines used on moderate sailboats, ..There go the boats.
 
  Since my boating days are over I feel blessed now.

carson FL


 
 
I watched some of it on tv and was astounded at the speed and force of the water. :eek: We were on watch here but the tsunami had little effect. Three foot waves off the west coast of VI but no damage as it hit during low tide. One politico was howling that the provincial government did do enough soon enough to warn everyone about the risk. A government minister replied they wanted to assess the real risk before sending everyone into the panic mode which was the sensible thing to do.
 
OK for a calm lake, but methinks that Terrawind would be toast in even the smallest of tsunamis.
 
I had duty on-board ship in Pearl Harbor when the 1964 Alaska earthquake hit. They didn't know if we would get hit by the tsunami. They had us extend the mooring lines by what they thought the surge would be plus two feet. It turned out to be pretty much a non event at Pearl.
 
This one was quite different Don, and they had less time to react, given the proximity to shore of the quake.
 
I've experienced a number of earthquakes, the worst being the Loma Prieta quake of 1989. It pales in comparison with the one that hit Japan this week. But I'd still prefer to face an earthquake than a tsunami. There's a good chance of surviving a quake, but a tsunami will wipe out everything in its path.
 
Thanks Margi. I'm only starting to gain an understanding of what happened further up the coast. I'd previously heard the Mayor of Crescent City had described the marina as being "totally destroyed". Saw some TV footage of it this morning.
 
Did you spot the Sea Ray in the slide show?  It looks very much like the one we sold when we went full time.

Margi
 
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