January 11, 2005
Tsunami: Maldives & coral reefs
The Maldives had no warning of the tsunami, even though there was a 4 hour timelag.
How come the Maldives were not informed? We know that the Thai Meteorological Department had been warned of an impending tsunami one hour before it happened,but failed to issue a public warning before the tsunami struck.
Some parts of the Maldives were so severely lashed by last month's tsunami that the map of the paradise cluster of nearly 1200 tiny islands literally needs to be redrawn.
Most of the low-lying Maldives escaped the full fury of the tsunami.
But the south-eastern stretch of atolls, famed for some of the world's best scuba diving, took a direct hit, with waves as high as four metres.
These waves packed enough power to batter islands into new shapes and, in some cases, wipe them off the map completely.
The Maldives were lucky. The tsunami waves that hit them were much smaller than the walls of water up to 10 metres high reported elsewhere. As they did elsewhere, the first waves struck the islands' eastern shores, which faced the epicentre, and then swirled round to crash into their western seaboard.
In the Maldives the phenomenon was a life saver, with the second wave cresting so soon after the first that it simply washed people back on to the shore.
It is also likely that the coral reefs helped to save the Maldives. Australia will lend a hand to repair the damaged coral reefs.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at January 11, 2005 04:56 PM | TrackBack