Tsunami hits Solomon Islands

TSUNAMI warnings remain in place for the east coast with residents of New South Wales and Tasmania being warned to avoid the beach - and get to high ground if the tide suddenly goes out.(EST 11:11am, Monday 2nd April)

 

Talk about chaos around Cairns, and north. Cyclones (hurricanes) give us 2-3 days notice at least. With Tsunamis you are lucky to get 2 hours notice. Australia has never has a Tsunami alert like this one, and remembering the Indonesian Boxing Day Tsunami, panic set in.

Lots of people in Cairns tried to drive up to Kuranda (in the mountain ranges) and traffic was blocked everwhere. We had to be advised of the Tsunami by the Hawaiian Weather Bureau. Thanks Hawaii, but Australia should have warnings from a nearer Weather station. Imagine if the Tsunami had of been off the Eastern tip of Papua New Guinea (as is distinctly possible) we would have had very little notice. Had it been at nighttime most people would have been asleep. No sirens, or other way, to wake up the populace.

We were extremely lucky this time. It was a great dry run and proceedures need to be written by State and Local government as to what to do next time.

Hopefully there will be a Tsunami map published saying which suburbs are vulnerable and giving instructions where to go to be safe. If you are more than 1-2 kilometres (1 mile) from the beach you are probably fairly safe.

The Australian east coast is lucky in the the Great Barrier Reef parallels the coast for many hundreds of kilometres, and hopefully that will take the initial sting of a Tsunami.

I am well inland so we had no worries and merely listened to the confusion on local radio. Bazza

 

Bazza, I watched the updates on Sky News after my 15 year old daughter rang me from Wollongong in a panic telling me to go outside and get the cat! I live in the Sutherland Shire a few k's from the coast but hey any thing's possible!

You seem to have have had all the excitement, we were just told to keep away from the beaches.

Since I watched a program on TV about the prediction of a tsunami hitting the east coast in May 2004 and that the only place safe from the wall of water would be the Blue Mountains, I've had reoccurring nightmares of walls of water drowning me Just like that wave on 'A Perfect Storm'! That's one thing that truly terrifies me.

http://www.campaignleadership.com/blogger/uploaded_images/perfect_storm_1-796069.jpg

 

The Cairns Mayor has promised a Tsunami map (of safe and unsafe areas). :cool
They are going to devise a protocol for Tsunami events.
Gotta have protocols for everything, these PC and OHS days.
This, hopefully, will take the chaos out of future Tsunamis. Bazza