A ten-foot-high tsunami crashed ashore in the Solomon Islands on Monday following a magnitude 7.2 earthquake. Some 200 homes were destroyed and1,000 people left homeless, and yet no one has been reported injured or missing yet.
This is not a miracle -- this is disaster preparedness. Solomon Islanders clearly remember when a magnitude 8.1 quake sent an even bigger wave plowing into the islands in April 2007. The government has even considered relocating citizens away from low-lying areas. These folks are seasoned tsunami survivors. They know better than to mess around taking videos of advancing deadly waves.
As residents of Rendova and Tetepare islands return to the remains of their homes, the tragedy of this event will sink in and the near future will no doubt be a very difficult, sad time for them. But they are alive, and after a tsunami hits, that's saying something.
On another note, you might wonder why the region around the Solomons is so full of earthquakes (another tremor, this one a magnitude 6.9, just rocked the area this morning). The simple answer is it's an unusually crowded area of small tectonic plates, all grinding beneath one another and overlapping like a cluster of fish scales.
Image: AFP/Getty
Tags: Earthquakes, Natural Disasters, Oceanography, Tsunami
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