Tsunami warning a reminder of nature's unpredictability

Photo / Paul Estcourt

What a crazy weekend I had covering the Pacific Tsunami as it roared towards New Zealand at the speed of a 747.

It was about 8:30 on Saturday evening when I was sitting outside on my lawn with a glass of red wine just enjoying the quiet evening, my golden retriever, Harry, was chewing a stick on the lawn and the sun had set. It was quiet. It was peaceful.

But on the other side of the Pacific Ocean cars dropped from collapsing double decker highways and waves sucked people out to sea as a violent earthquake took place on the coast of Chile.

My phone beeped with a CNN alert saying an "8.5 quake" (revised up to 8.8 soon after) had hit Chile. My very first instinct was 'tsunami'.

Since the Boxing Day tsunami we often hear in the media the word 'tsunami' used anytime there's an earthquake near the sea. I usually don't pay too much attention unless a warning has actually been issued. But in this case I was concerned before a warning was even issued.

I was actually talking to my mother on the phone, just a quick chat about the garden (I know how to party it up on my Saturday nights huh?) when the text came through from CNN. The first thing I said to her was "New Zealand's worst tsunami came from Chile in the 1800s".

According to Te Ara's website it was August 1868 when an earthquake of about magnitude 9.0 offshore from the Peru-Chile border generated a devastating tsunami. The earthquake and tsunami killed thousands of people along the South American coast. Spreading across the Pacific, it became the largest recorded distant tsunami to strike New Zealand, affecting many ports and causing substantial damage on the Chatham Islands and Banks Peninsula.

Te Ara's website says the tsunami reached the Chatham Islands around 1 am on August 15, about 15 hours after the earthquake. Maori at the village of Tupuangi were woken by water surging into their houses and fled to higher ground. Subsequently two larger waves totally destroyed the village and the houses of several European settlers. One Maori drowned, carried out to sea while trying to retrieve a boat that had come adrift. The tsunami also damaged buildings at Waitangi.

Several hours later, on Banks Peninsula in the South Island, a night watchman discovered the ships at Lyttelton's wharves sitting on the mud bottom - the water had drained from the harbour area. Around 4am a foaming wall of water surged into the harbour, and the water rose by over 7 metres. Ships' hawsers snapped, and the ships were dashed against the wharves and each other, causing heavy damage. The sea gradually receded, but more big waves rolled in at intervals of several hours, and water levels rose and fell erratically over several days. In smaller bays around the peninsula, tsunami waves penetrated far inland along valleys, damaging homes and carrying away bridges and fences.

So this time around New Zealand certainly got off lightly. The potential was definitely there to cause damage - but more importantly there's the risk of being swept away. It's not always a big wave that kills you in a tsunami... sometimes it's just the shear power of the water. There is so much energy in a tsunami, even a small one. This means the chances of getting caught in a rip, or being pulled under, are much higher.

These two exclusive photos sent into WeatherWatch.co.nz by CH Davis clearly show the power in the water. Normally calm, the sea is stirred up violently by a relatively small wave. Note the whirlpool to the left of the first photo.

Despite this earthquake being 80 times more powerful than the Haitian quake the death toll was much lower. So why was that? Well there are a couple of reasons. Firstly infrastructure. The infrastructure in Haiti is pretty weak. Chile has more money, better buildings, better roads. Buildings collapsed instantly in Haiti. Secondly the quake wasn't directly under a city - as it was in Haiti.

Covering this tsunami, from a news point of view, was unlike anything I've covered before. I went to sleep about 2:30am on Sunday and woke again at 7am. I think I posted something like 100 twitter updates, as did WeatherWatch from their twitter account.

The New Zealand Civil Defence did a good job at covering the tsunami once it was well and truly up and running although I certainly feel that they took far too long to get the warnings out to the public. On Saturday night, when it was obvious to me that at the very least an advisory should be issued, nothing was issued by our government - despite Australia issuing a warning for their eastern coastline and Norfolk Island - which is just 700kms north of NZ. It was odd for Australia to have warnings in place before NZ, considering the waves were going to affect us a number of hours before them.

By the time we did have a warning out it was late on Saturday night, many had gone to bed. On Sunday morning many people were unaware that a tsunami was even on the way.

I don't think the NZ government should have panicked the nation on Saturday evening but I do believe a simple statement that said "no warnings are in place but there is certainly the potential for one to be issued later this evening" would've caught the eyes and ears of more people. Their coverage from the first warning was fantastic though - and credit to their GetThru website and twitter updates.

Another learning curve for everyone in this most violent and unpredictable act of nature.