Ha! They actually had school closures in Washington state for fear of the 1 ft. tsunami waves reaching our shore. Pathetic.
1 ft wave, possibly traveling at speeds over 500 MPH is nothing to f*ck around with. Also, that is 1 ft in the open ocean, when it gets into shallower coastal areas it piles up. When it actually hits land the height , depending on bottom contour, could be 20-30 feet or even more.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110312/ap_on_re_us/us_japan_earthquake_pacificCRESCENT CITY, Calif. – The warnings traveled quickly across the Pacific in the middle of the night: An 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan spawned a deadly tsunami, and it was racing east Friday as fast as a jetliner.
Sirens blared in Hawaii. The West Coast pulled back from the shoreline, fearing the worst. People were warned to stay away from the beaches. Fishermen took their boats out to sea and safety.
The alerts moved faster than the waves, giving millions of people across the Pacific Rim hours to prepare.
In the end, harbors and marinas in California and Oregon bore the brunt of the damage, estimated by authorities to be in the millions of dollars.
Boats crashed into each other, some vessels were pulled out to sea and docks were ripped out. Rescue crews searched hours for a man who was swept out to sea while taking pictures.
None of the damage — in the U.S., South America or Canada — was anything like the devastation in Japan.
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As
the tsunami raced across the Pacific at 500 mph, the first sirens began sounding across Hawaii late
Thursday night.
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Their beachfront house was unscathed.
Many other Pacific islands also evacuated their shorelines for a time. In Guam, the waves broke two U.S. Navy submarines from their moorings, but tug boats brought them back to their pier.
In Oregon, the first swells to hit the U.S. mainland were barely noticeable.
Sirens pierced the air in Seaside, a popular tourist town near the Washington state line. Restaurants, gift shops and other beachfront businesses stayed shuttered. Some residents moved to the hills nearby, gathering behind a house.
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Outside Brookings, Ore., just north of the California border, four people went to a beach to watch the waves and were swept into the sea. Two got out on their own, and the others were rescued, authorities said.
In Crescent City, Calif., miles to the south, the Coast Guard suspended their hours-long search at dark for a man who was swept out to sea. He was taking photos near the mouth of the Klamath River. Two people with him jumped in to rescue him. They were able to get back to land, authorities said.
Sheriff's deputies went door to door at dawn to urge residents to seek higher ground.
An 8-foot wave rushed into the harbor, destroying about 35 boats and ripping chunks off the wooden docks, as marina workers and fishermen scrambled between surges to secure property. Officials estimated millions of dollars in damage.
When the water returned, someone would yell "Here comes another one!" to clear the area.
Ted Scott, a retired mill worker who lived in the city when a 1964 tsunami killed 17 people on the West Coast, including 11 in Crescent City, watched the water pour into the harbor.
"This is just devastating. I never thought I'd see this again," he said. "I watched the docks bust apart. It buckled like a graham cracker."
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