Reply #8: The East Coast can have the next Tsunami, also... [View All]

[haele]

The next century, next month, or next week, or tomorrow, or half an hour from now... From a major quake or landslide off Bimini, Cape Verde, Iceland, or the Azores. And it wouldn't take as long to hit the East Coast as a major Alaska or Japanese quake would to hit Oregon or California - perhaps three hours from off the Azores to hit Florida.

And it would be much more deadly because while the West Coast has lots of cliff face to break a wave and not a lot of shallow seafloor coming up to the populated beaches, the East Coast has very little natural protection over a much wider swath of coastline. A quickly moving 1000 mile wide tsunami front of 35 ft in height would do how much damage to Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas?

California, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii have already experienced major tsunamis this last century - and have some procedures and building codes in place to deal with tidal flooding and tsunamis. Yeah, they all need a bit more tweaking - but still, with the ability to send out warnings quickly and fairly accurately, emergency services can be set up to handle the aftermath quickly and efficiently.
I would prefer that instead of people screaming "the sky is falling" in pointing out a particular areas where people already know there's a danger, they look at the overall state of preparedness nationwide. The East Coast has a lot more tsunami disaster preparedness to do than the West Coast - moreso because there's a public misconception that "it happens to those guys, why do we have to worry?"

Just my two cents.

Haele