Powerful earthquake triggered tsunamis, but why didn’t they cause more damage?

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean triggered tsunamis

But after a massive quake like that, why didn't the tsunamis cause more damage

There are several factors in the severity of tsunamis caused by earthquakes

First, the depth of the quake. An earthquake closer to the surface will cause a more severe wave

A deep earthquake, although it might be very powerful, It's not likely to have the same capacity for disrupting the water column as a shallow earthquake

Another factor is the movement of the quake. Is the seafloor actually rupturing up and down, which could then displace this water column and generate a wave or a series of waves

Or is the seafloor, maybe the earthquake is doing a different type of motion that doesn't have as much capacity to perturb the water column

What matters in the end for how large the tsunami is, is how much water is displaced, how much water is pushed up, typically for these type of events

That amount of water is related to how much the fault actually slips at the Earth's surface

The impact of a tsunami on land can also differ on some ecological factors around the landmass itself If you have a barrier reef or if you have an extensive shallow platform offshore of the coastline as we do at a couple of locations in Hawaii then the energy of that wave can

be dissipated far offshore before it actually reaches where humans have built houses and

roads, etc. It doesn't have to be a giant wall of water to have pretty severe life-threatening consequences

The indirect correlation between the size of an earthquake and an ensuing tsunami can make predicting the tsunami impact difficult

That's why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration takes a better safe than sorry approach

Whenever we're doing these types of estimations of what the hazard's likely to be, we certainly don't want to underestimate what the hazard could be

You don't want to leave people in areas that could be dangerous. Fletcher agreed, but added there's room for improvement

At the same time that the first wave was hitting our shoreline, you had people trapped in cars a couple of blocks from the coast

So there's still some elements to this that our leaders and managers of emergency warning systems need to figure out and think hard about

For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan. For more unbiased straight facts, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com