Doom & Gloom Report
Costal / Open Ocean - maybe even far up rivers that meet the ocean.
Reuters
MSNBC
Edward Bryant has written a book about mega-waves titled "Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard."
Tsunami warning
sets off a wave
of controversy
Scientist sounds the alarm —
and attracts skeptics as well
WOLLONGONG, Australia, Feb. 26 — One day, a giant wave traveling at 124 mph across open water could crash into Sydney Harbor, wipe out the beaches of California or plow across the golf courses of northeast Scotland. Mega-tsunamis have happened with greater frequency than modern science would like to believe, and no coastline in the world is safe, says geologist-geographer Edward Bryant.
May 2, 2000 — A killer wave called tsunami could develop in an unlikely place: the East Coast of the United States, reports NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell.
BRYANT SAID he had found signs of giant waves sweeping over 425-foot (130-meter) high headlands in southeast Australia, roaring down America’s West Coast and carving into the bedrock of the Scottish coastline north of Edinburgh.
“I believe St. Andrews golf course is a tsunami deposit,” Bryant, head of geosciences at Wollongong University south of Sydney, told Reuters.
Over the past 2,000 years, tsunamis have left an official death toll of 462,597 people in the Pacific region alone, with the largest toll recorded in the Japanese islands.
Of the top recorded events, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is said to have triggered a 45-foot-high (14-meter-high) wave that destroyed the port of Lisbon and caused widespread destruction in southwest Spain, western Morocco and across the Atlantic in the Caribbean.
Modern science blames the killer waves on earthquakes and most countries believe they are immune.
But in his book, “Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard,” Bryant argues that submarine landslides, underwater volcanoes and even the potentially catastrophic scenario of a meteorite impact must also be taken into account when evaluating tsunami risk.
That means a destructive tsunami moving at 750 feet (228 meters) per second in deep water, 260 feet (80 meters) per second across continental shelves and at 30 feet (9 meters) per second at shore could strike an unprotected coastal metropolis anywhere, killing thousands. (cont)
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