Earthquake

[Zeus]

Any of our Aussie or Kiwi friends have anything to report on the tsunami?

[northerncat]

yeah, there was supposed to be a good size tsunami coming to us in cairns but it turned out to be a 10 cm ripple. a whole pile of schools got evacuated but not mine,... dammit
sean

[cooper]

not looking good in the solomons...up to 10 metere waves, reports of whole villages getting wiped out to sea........waiting for reports from more remote islands......they took it seriously here though ...had warnings ready to go as far south as gabo island and lakes enterance .....expected arival (computer model 11.30 oz eastern standard) called it off after the result from the automatic tidal bouy willis islands......makes you think

[mudnut]

All ports from Cairns to Bisbane were shut down for a while,latter opened,.All patrolled beach's closed for a while,latter opened.I heard Cooktown got wiped out,load of crap,didn't even close down.I think the people of the Solomons need the assistance.Dig deep folks,dig shallow,It all helps.Mudnut.

[Zeus]

Glad to hear it was not more serious. Sounds like the damage will be relatively minimal.
zeus

[Greg S]

Yahoo news link. Story, pictures... Tsunami hits South Pacific's Solomons - Yahoo! News

[CaptainK]

That is very sad news.

I read about it yesterday morning. So sad to hear about those poor people. Losing their homes, or their lives over the tsunami's!!

[Alan Wheeler]

Hi guy's Seafox and I are on a mooring in the sounds. We got the tsunami warning and it was expected here at 3.30PM. So we waxed the decks to get a good foot hold and waited for the wave to come. But it didn't and we are most disapointed.
Having a fantastic time by the way.

[NoTies]

Had a surge come through Auckland Harbour around 4 pm yesterday NZ time. I was in our floating boatshed which lowered & lifted about 30cm and our boats out on the harbour felt it. Was certainly different from the usual ferry wake as it was one wave only. The Fullers ferries were told to leave their berths before the expected time and they returned just in time to cop it while they were tying up.

[N.M.I.ke]

Up here we had the tsunami alert for 10:30 ish, and were released for typhoon prep at 3pm. (Sometimes Nature seems to conspire against you...)

But, neither hit us, so I'm feeling a bit lucky today.

[Boracay]

I heard the warnings on the radio so I knocked off work early.

I don't think that anyone noticed anything at all.

[GordMay]

Aid flows grow in Solomons, tsunami toll set to rise
By Walter Nalangu (Reuters, April 6)
Goto: Aid flows grow in Solomons, tsunami toll set to rise | Reuters

“... At least 34 are known to have died but the death toll is expected to rise sharply with up to 100 people still missing. Bad weather was also hampering relief shipments to remote islands.
... The tsunami and earthquake destroyed up to 2,500 homes and left an estimated 5,500 people displaced, says the Solomons government.
... While relief supplies continued to arrive, shortages of clean drinking water, adequate sanitation and medicines and materials to prevent malaria were the biggest causes of concern, a government official said on Friday ...”

[Boracay]

It is hard to know what help we as ordinary citizens can give to the tsunami victims.

There seems to be a pattern where a catastrophe occurs, money is given as charity but is tied up in accounting and bureaucracy.

Time passes, the money is slowly expended as administrative costs.

Then there is another disaster, there is no money left so the cycle begins anew.

To me it is best to leave management of these occurrences to the government. They have the resources to send aid quickly and to make sure there is minimal waste.

Or to give money to one of the charities that have an ongoing presence like Oxfam or Medicines sans frontiers.

[Alan Wheeler]

Being home now, I can give a better discription of the day. The NZ Maritime Radio were giving warnings of the expected Tsunami. I will say at this point, I am not sure I agree with how it was given, nor how information was distributed to the broader Boating radio cominucation system. Firstly, the call from Maritime radio was that a Tsunami was going to hit NZ between 1400hrs and 1700hrs NZ time and the height of the wave was 1m(3ft) peak to trough and that the wave was traveling in a North to South direction.
So several points were implied in this. We thought the wave was a certain. We thought the wave was of a known height. We weren't sure if the time was a guess or if the top of the North Ilsand would be hit at 1400hrs and the bottom at 1700hrs. The later is what I had figured so I aproximated the wave would be traveling about 800Kms/hr. That would place it at our location around 1530hrs. Our local marine radio new nothing. The radio operator had been listening to the warnings but had not heard anything from anyone formaly. She eventually called someone and got the information. I was spot on with my assumption of time. The wave was expected to arrive at the sounds entrances at 3.30PM. The time she was telling us this was now around 3.45PM. That was a bit late. The expected result of the wave surge was extreme tidal activity around the tory channel entrance and other tidal overflows around the sounds entrances. So it turned out to be nothing of any consiquence. We never felt or saw anything. There was a report that a surge of 1m was had in the Mana Marina at around 11.00PM that night. That was way out of any time frames anyone was suggesting, so that was strange. Kind of annoying really. Not that we didn't get a wave, but more for the lack of comunication and accuracy of information. We are in an increasingly narrowing sound and it shallows. It is just perfect for amplifying the effects of a Tsunami should one ever get down the mouth of the sound. I happend to be visiting the sound and was leaving my boat on a block while we went into the port on the other boat. Several things worried us all. Just what could we possibly have come down the sound to meet us. Was my boat safe on the block and so on and so on. I do hope the authorities do a debrief on this and look at possible shortfalls and problems within the system. I think we have a long way to go before we get the civil defence service upto scratch. Having a top working civil defense system is essential for NZ. We are prone to major earthquakes that do huge damage and we are way over due for the "big one" as they say. The possibility of a huge Tsunami is very real. One's in the past have left the evidence of damage 150ft up hill sides around the country. Mind you, I suppose it dosn't matter what the heck someone says on a radio if one of those big boys roll in.