Cascadia's Fault - Jerry Thompson [131]
“It was an incredible match,” Bernard continued. “So we were extremely happy.” He grinned and then added, “Vasily was of course beside himself because this was the first time we had seen an open ocean tsunami of this size. And to model it correctly was quite satisfying.”
While it might sound callous to be satisfied about successfully creating a digital clone of a killer tsunami in a computer, what Titov and Bernard and dozens of other researchers around the world learned from the Indian Ocean will no doubt save lives the next time this happens. When it does, detection systems now in development will be tripped as soon as the tsunami begins to move. With the knowledge gained from putting Titov’s model to the test, it should be possible to say with some degree of certainty how that next monster will behave, what communities will be at risk, and how far up the beach the waves are likely to reach.
As Eddie Bernard put it, “Scientifically we have a wealth of new information—I mean, unprecedented information—that will guide us and improve everything we do in this whole field. But socially I think the most important thing that’s happened is it’s raised the awareness of tsunamis through the whole world. People take tsunamis seriously now.”
To underline his point, Bernard told us about the first real-time application of NOAA’s updated tsunami warning program in the aftermath of Sumatra. On November 15, 2006, a Kuril Island earthquake in the North Pacific generated a wave train big enough to create damage over a long distance. The swells began moving east across the Pacific, tripping the alarms on the deep-ocean warning buoys built and deployed by NOAA for just this purpose.
When one of the pressure sensors anchored on the bottom of the Pacific detected the extra weight of a larger than normal wave passing overhead, it transmitted a signal to warning centers in Alaska and in Hawaii. Now, instead of knowing only that an undersea earthquake had occurred, NOAA personnel knew for certain that swells of a potentially dangerous size had been generated.
Computers immediately ingested the data and spat out a prediction about where the waves would go and how big they would be when they got there. As the leading edge of the tsunami pounded across the Pacific from the Kuril Islands toward Crescent City, California, the computer produced a forecast. “There were ten waves,” said Bernard, “and the model picked this up and actually replicated it before the tsunami arrived in Crescent City. It predicted that number nine wave would be the biggest. And guess what—number nine wave was the biggest.”
Although none of them was as large or as vicious as the killer from Sumatra, the power of the moving water stunned those who saw it first-hand. Grady Harris, a grizzled and weather-beaten fisherman we met on the docks at Crescent City, told us he had heard the warning from NOAA and desperately tried to get his fishing boat out of the harbor and into the relative safety of deeper water. He made it just outside the breakwater, then got caught in a twisting torrent of seawater.
“In forty years on the ocean I’ve never seen that kind of a situation before,” said Harris. “It was like trying to drive the boat in a washing machine. It just turned the boat sideways, turned it—spinning it around.” He shook his head and stared across the dock, reliving the moment. “The awesome power of the water ...”
Harbormaster Richard Young saw the surge boiling through the harbor entrance. He and all the others standing on the docks that day were mesmerized. “Water came in so fast on that larger wave that it actually went over the top of the concrete floats.”
“It broke up the docks