(Nadine Pedoe)
There were no tsunami waves caused by this earthquake at all, despite some panic that there may be. The warning was taken off after about half an hour, but many people didn’t know it had been, so the panic continued. There is very little (but still some) risk of a tsunami from this fault. Other active faults are further from Belize.
The word ‘tsunami’ is Japanese. The English word for them used to be “tidal waves” but this is inaccurate as they have nothing to do with tides. There are very few languages with their own word for them because they are rare in most of the world. They are caused by undersea volcanoes, earthquakes and landslides and are still quite poorly understood by scientists. This is partly because they don’t happen often and also because there is no warning that they are about to happen, except for an earthquake which also can’t be predicted with any accuracy. Around 80% of them occur in the Pacific Ocean, triggered by the earthquakes and volcanoes around the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ – see last post. Japan is the most advanced country in their research as tsunamis hit their coastline every year.
Due to the devastating tsunami in Asia on 26th December 2004, the word ‘tsunami’ now strikes terror in the minds of most of us. Before this time, most people had little knowledge of what a tsunami was. However the conditions of a tsunami’s formation need to be (more…)
