Category Archives: tsunami

Oregon Sea Grant-funded tsunami research featured in NSF “Discoveries”

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“One of our experiments found that small seawalls cause a skyward deflection of an incoming tsunami wave, which consequently reduces wave energy and the force on structures directly landward of the wall. … As seawalls are inexpensive and easy to build, they are a sustainable tsunami defense measure applicable for most coastal communities.”

So writes Oregon State University (OSU) graduate student Mary Beth Oshnack in her article, “Building Tsunami-resistant Cities,” in the National Science Foundation’s online news feature, Discoveries. Oshnack has been working with Oregon Sea Grant researcher Dan Cox at OSU’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, part of the National Science Foundation’s  (NSF) Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES.

Prepare now to survive a West Coast tsunami

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Pat CorcoranASTORIA, Ore. – Two weeks after tsunamis in Sumatra and American Samoa initiated by powerful earthquakes killed hundreds of people, a growing number of Oregonians are wondering how people living along the West Coast will fare when a large – and possibly overdue – quake shakes our own soil.

“Unfortunately, our fascination with the physical phenomena eclipses our interest in preparing to survive our next big earthquake and tsunami,” said Patrick Corcoran, coastal hazards outreach specialist with the Oregon Sea Grant program at Oregon State University.

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Pacific tsunami highlights need to prepare

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The tsunami that struck American Samoa this week – and prompted a brief warning on the Oregon coast – illustrates the need for coastal tsunami preparedness, and how far most of the tsunami-prone world has to go toward developing an effective warning and response system.

This CBS News report on the science of tsunamis includes a good animation of how tsunamis occur, along with commentary by Dawn Wright, Oregon State University geosciences professor. National Public Radio, meanwhile, reported on progress toward preparedness in the seismically active Pacific Rim since the devastating tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004. “The biggest challenge … remains keeping people aware and knowledgeble about this hazard so that they strike, people do the right thing, ” said Charles McCreery, director of NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

In Oregon, Sea Grant’s Pat Corcoran is among those working to make coastal communities and their residents aware of what to do should a tsunami strike our coast:

For more information about tsunamis and preparedness, watch the Oregon Sea Grant video “Reaching Higher Ground.”