TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCASTQUEENSLAND TSUNAMI WARNING
Issued at 8:57am on Monday the 2nd of April 2007, by the Bureau of Meteorology
For people in coastal areas of Queensland.
TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
TSUNAMI BULLETIN
TSUNAMI THREAT TO EASTERN AUSTRALIA and Willis and Barrier Reef Islands, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii has detected an undersea earthquake near Solomon Islands and has issued a Tsunami Bulletin.
The earthquake has also been detected by Geoscience Australia.
FOR ALL OTHER PACIFIC AREAS, THIS MESSAGE IS AN ADVISORY ONLY.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS ORIGIN TIME – 6:40 am EST 02 APR 2007 COORDINATES – 8.6 SOUTH 157.2 EAST LOCATION – SOLOMON ISLANDS MAGNITUDE – 8.1
MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY HONIARA 15CM ZERO-TO-PEAK OBSERVED AT 7:31 am EST EVALUATION
SEA LEVEL READINGS INDICATE A TSUNAMI WAS GENERATED. IT MAY HAVE BEEN DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS NEAR THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER AND COULD ALSO BE A THREAT TO MORE DISTANT COASTS. AUTHORITIES SHOULD TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION IN RESPONSE TO THIS POSSIBILITY. THIS CENTER WILL CONTINUE TO MONITOR SEA LEVEL DATA TO DETERMINE THE EXTENT AND SEVERITY OF THE THREAT.
FOR ALL AREAS – WHEN NO MAJOR WAVES ARE OBSERVED FOR TWO HOURS AFTER THE ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL OR DAMAGING WAVES HAVE NOT OCCURRED FOR AT LEAST TWO HOURS THEN LOCAL AUTHORITIES CAN ASSUME THE THREAT IS PASSED. DANGER TO BOATS AND COASTAL STRUCTURES CAN
CONTINUE FOR SEVERAL HOURS DUE TO RAPID CURRENTS. AS LOCAL CONDITIONS CAN CAUSE A WIDE VARIATION IN TSUNAMI WAVE ACTION THE ALL CLEAR DETERMINATION MUST BE MADE BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES.
ESTIMATED INITIAL TSUNAMI WAVE ARRIVAL TIMES. ACTUAL ARRIVAL TIMES
MAY DIFFER AND THE INITIAL WAVE MAY NOT BE THE LARGEST. THE TIME BETWEEN SUCCESSIVE TSUNAMI WAVES CAN BE FIVE MINUTES TO ONE HOUR.
Based on the magnitude and location of the earthquake, tsunami could start affecting these locations at the following local time:
Cooktown from 0931am 02/04/2007
Cairns from 0949am
Brisbane 1033am
Gladstone 1139am
Mackay 1144am
This bulletin is also available through TV and Radio broadcasts and the Bureau’s website at www.bom.gov.au/tsunami/
Dangerous waves and currents may affect beaches, harbours and rivers for several hours from the time of impact and low- lying coastal areas could be flooded.
The waves can be separated in time by between ten to sixty minutes and the first wave of the series may not be the largest.
The Queensland State Emergency Service advises that people should stay away from low lying coastal areas.
This warning will be updated by this morning.
This warning is also available through TV and Radio broadcasts; the Bureau’s website at www.bom.gov.au or call 1300 659 218
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The weather bureau in Queensland says the threat of a tsunami hitting eastern Australia appears to have eased.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1887085.htm
But there is apparently significant damage in the Soloman Island.
PS Many readers of this weblog live in coastal Queensland.
The warning was later extended for the entire east coast of Australia, which lead to beaches in Sydney being closed.
However, radio reports indicate that surfers didn’t come out of the water, and people sunbathing had to be ‘chased off the beach’.
The expected time for the tsunami in Sydney has passed without event.
But what if the outcome had been different? There’s not a lot of point in having such warnings if people are going to ignore them.
Sylvia.
Nobody could give specific information until after 9 am, thats when they all file in and punch their cards.
Or have their cards punched.
Damn it, and it was at just the right angle to wipe “Boring Bay” (Byron) off the map. Better luck next time, eh?
Seriously, the only problem was that it was due to hit Brisbane before it hit Gladstone, according to the above post.
Rog and Ian getting a real lather up. Is it autumn guys? Hormones changing with sun angle.
Beware, useless ramble following.
In April 1976 I was caught in a cyclone in the Solomon sea, between the the Solomons, & New Guinea.
I was quite put out about this, as they are extremely rare that far north & just never occur after the end of march. Don’t you just hate it when these natural phenomena don’t obey their own rules?
As I was 140 Nautical miles from the nearest solid thing I could hit, & my yacht was well found, I lashed every thing down, & retired below, leaving the yacht to lay ahull. After 42 hours, the wind dropped & I got the boat ready to sail on, but the sun had still not appeared 30 hours later, I was getting sick of waiting.
In those days a sat nav was worth more than half the value of my yacht, so, as I needed to find out where I was, I needed the sun to take a couple of sights. As the Solomon Islands are high, 4000 to 6000 Ft, & mostly steep to [no reefs], on their western side, I headed for them. When I found them, I found I had drifted 72 mautical miles NNW during the cyclone.
Gizo was the nearest port of entry, so I found my way to the beautiful little port. The island is just a mountain, sticking up out of the ocean, surrounded by hundreds of little islands, down to 1/4 acre or so, these, covered in coconuts, or vegetable gardens.
There is so little flat land that the light aircraft strip is 3 miles away, on a sand kay.
Indicative of the nature of the place, 4 years after independence, the warehouse on the Jetty, still had a huge sign, declaring, Gizo. British Solomon Islands Protrectorate.
Also indicative was the man who, a couple of minutes after I dropped anchor, was jumping up & down on the shore, shouting at me. I discovered that he was a government surveyor, sent up from Honiara for a few days work. He the only euporean on the island, & was staying at the Beautiful government guest house.
His main problem was, that as they were unable to find the guest house cook he had been living on some Corn Flakes, & powdered milk, he’d found at a Chinese trade store, for 3 days. The district governor, a local, was not interrested in helping find a cook.
An englishman, he was bemused. As he told me, quite regularly, “it was never like this in India”. He also told me it was best to avoid the hotel, as it was the kind of place, where they hose the mess out with a fire hose, after the close of business each night.
I stayed in port for the next few days, as a kind of floating English Gentleman’s Club, feeding him something more to his taste. In fact, most of it was chinese tinned stuff, from one of the trade stores. It was the quite best tinned food I have ever eaten.
When I reached Honiara, I was whisked off to the highlands by this gentleman & about 30 of his countrymen & women, who were all there courtesy of the UK government, helping the newly independent Solomon. Boy, do they know how to live, & entertain.
Gizo was a realy beautiful place, I hope the damage to it, & its people is not too great.
Well, poor little Gizo did cop a battering, but, in retrospect, there was no reason for a tsunami warning in Oz.
With Honaira recieving only 15 CM, there was never any chance of anything getting to here. Honaira is at the southern end of “the slot”, the channel between the 2 chains of islands that make up the Solomons, & only around 100 miles from the earthquake epicenter. The slot is the place that JFK was playing with his PT boat, when it was cut in half by a Jap destroyer.
The bureau probably did not know how to ring the Australian Federal Police, in Honaira. to ask if it was still there. Of course, they’d have to know a bit of geography to figure it all out.
It is a governmemt dept. so I surpose they had to cover their backs. A bit like GW, isn’t it? If you are going to be wrong, make sure your with the majority, & it won’t matter.
The relief effort is going all pear shaped as most of them do. Flying stuff into Munda, which is almost as far to the north west of Gizo, as Honiara is to the south east, doesn’t make much sense, unless there’s a lot of damage on New Georgia as well.
Munda is an interesting place. It was a Jap fighter base during the battle for Honaria, [where the yanks came close to loosing, & when the future US president took his swim].
After the yanks took the place, they built the largest bomber base in the world, at that time. They built a 12,000 foot runway by laying live corral, dredged from the bay, & keeping it alive by soaking it in sea water, & rolling it daily, for a month. This all knitted together to form a surface like concrete. It was still sound, 35 years later, with no maintenance.
Can you imagine if they tried that today. The greenies wiuld make the japs look like girl guides.
The last time I was there the local mission manager told me that they had just had the third day, in 18 months, when there had been NO rain. Perhaps Mr Beattie could pump Brisbanes water from there.
With all that rain, the airstrip, apart from the little bit used by local light aircraft, is covered in moss. One to four inches high, this stuff is so slippery, that you have to crawl to cross it safely. That really stops you getting any inflated ideas of your importance in the scheme of things.
Wouldn’t it be great to lay the stuff at the entrance of all our parliament buildings?