[Pil-pc-oceania] No tsunami here, but food for thought

[pacific-edge]

"All council can do", said the Mayor of Manly, Peter MacDonald, "is to close
the beach and get police assistance to clear it if need be".

The Mayor had joined the surprisingly small number gathered at Manly Beach.
Apart from the curious, there were a few hopeful freelancers with cameras,
like myself, and one or two videojournalists half anticipating, half fearing
that ominous retreat of the sea, that prelude to the arrival of something
rare on our East Coast beaches.

Earlier, I spoke with a videojournlist as we were both photographing the
lines of people waiting for buses down by the ferry wharf - the harbour
ferry service had been stopped a few hours earlier. "Not much doing... not
many down at the beach... so I'm getting this crowd as there's little else
going", he said, hoisting his Sony videocam onto his shoulder. He, too, had
noted the surprisingly small crowd at the beach.

The earthquake - 8.2 on the Richter scale - had earlier this morning shaken
the Solomon Islands and reports were coming in that the town of Gizo has
been damaged and coastal villages elsewhere had been swamped by the
resulting tsunami. That wave, I understood, was now making its way across
the Coral Sea directly for Manly and other beaches on the NSW and Queensland
coast, all of which had been closed.

Getting accurate reports during a disaster is always difficult and much of
what was being reported would have come over the high-frequency radio
network that links Solomon Island villages. I thought of Tony Jansen, from
our TerraCircle consultancy, who had returned to Honiara only a few days
earlier, and of a Kastom Gaden Association (KGA - an associate agency of
TerraCircle) field worker out on Kolombangara island, some kilometres
seaward, east of Gizo. (see excerpt below).

It was a warm, clear, early Autumn day in Manly - the type of weather that
sends locals and tourists alike into the water. But the sea this morning was
strangely vacant, apart from a few surfers catching the late morning swell
further along at Freshwater. The reason why soon became apparent as the PA
at the surf club announced that the State Emergency Services had issued a
warning about the expected tsunami and people were being advised to vacate
the beach and move to higher ground. Those choosing to stay in the water -
they were not many - were advised to immediately move to higher ground if
the sea suddenly retreated - a phenomena that sometimes precedes the arrival
of a tsunami. The warning was repeated at regular intervals and, hearing it,
I looked across the road to the Steyne Hotel with its open rooftop bar, a
good place to run to, if need be, from where I could still get photographs.

Well, the waves never came but sitting with a cappuccino in town later there
was a buzz of conversation about the tsunami.

"It makes you think about just how vulnerable we are", the Mayor had earlier
told those of us at the beach. He was right. Even though the tsunami failed
to crash ashore in Manly, I wondered what the consequences would be of a
major earthquake or seabed avalanche on the west coast of New Zealand, a
geologically unstable region. Those islands are more or less directly
opposite us here in Manly, just across the Tasman Sea. How much warning
would we get of a major event? And how would we respond?

................

Later...

TONY SAFE, NO WORD FROM KGA ON KOLOMBANGARA
Following is an excerpt from a Sydney Morning Herald online report issued
today at 3:19PM.

It quotes Tony Jansen, from TerraCircle consultancy (www.terracircle.org.au)
and an associate, Peter Lynch.

...Some people are injured really badly and the whole town is all messed
(up). There are some buildings left over but some are collapsed and
destroyed now.

Australian Tony Jansen, who is based in Honiara, emailed a friend to say
there were reports of "homes floating out to sea" in Gizo.

Nixon Silas, who owns a 12-metre ferry called Namita Rose, and the boat's
skipper, Eddie, were about to pick up passengers at Noro when they realised
something was wrong.

"They saw all the trees shaking and all the coconuts falling out,'' said
their business partner, Australian-based Peter Lynch, who spoke to the pair
via satellite phone earlier today.

"At the moment there's a tsunami alert still on and the boat is going into
those shallow areas and helping people get to higher ground."

Mr Lynch, the general manager of Pelena Energy, which is setting up coconut
oil-powered boats in the Solomon Islands, said the pair reported seeing the
seas rise almost five metres 30 minutes after the earthquake occurred.

Wharves smashing
"The words [Mr Silas] used were that many of the wharves were smashing,
there was lots of swirling water and strong current and that the islands
were sinking, which suggests to me that the water levels were high and they
were staying high at that point.

"There was many drums and other debris floating in the water.

"After leaving Noro [Mr Silas] travelled back to his village 40 kilometres
away on the boat and latest reports are that there has been widespread
damage in that village with a number of houses destroyed, including his
mother's, which is flattened."

Mr Lynch said he had also received an email from the principal at St
Dominic's Rural Training Centre on Kolombangara Island, which is about 19
kilometres from Gizo, stating that the Gizo's runway had been damaged
because the tsunami wave went over the top of it.

"The tsunami washed right across the airstrip and the planes cannot land,"
email said.

His school's wharf had collapsed completely and there was damage to other
school buildings due to the earthquake.

There had also been a four-metre high wave that hit the island but it caused
no major damage.

Mr Lynch said he had contacted the RAMSI special co-ordinator to offer the
Namita Rose any assistance required.

Disaster council meeting
Fred Fakari, chairman of the Solomons National Disaster Council said phone
lines and electricity were down in Gizo, which was hampering efforts to find
out the extent of the damage.

The quake struck at 7.40am (6.40am AEST) and was centred about 350
kilometres west-northwest of the capital, Honiara, at a depth of 10
kilometres, the US Geological Survey said.

A series of aftershocks, with a magnitude of up to 6.7 continued to rock the
area during the day.

Authorities on Taro Island, the main centre in Choiseul Province in the
country's west, have described the "strangely frightening" behaviour of the
sea as the tsunami rolled in.

Provincial Premier Jackson Kiloe said the sea was sucked away from the shore
before huge rolling waves swept in.

Parts of the coastal sea bed were left dry and exposed as the water was
pulled out before the wall of water rushed ashore.

"The huge wave rolls are stronger than floods," he said by phone from Taro
Island.

"They are causing large areas of ocean to dry up exposing fish and other
marine life."


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RUSS GRAYSON
journalism, editing, online journalism & content, photojournalism,
instructional manuals/communication services for international development

PO Box 1045, Manly, NSW 1655 AUSTRALIA
info at pacific-edge.info
P: 0414 065 203
www.pacific-edge.info

TerraCircle international development team, Oceania
www.terracircle.org.au

Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network
www.communitygarden.org.au

Sydney Food Fairness Alliance
www.sydneyfoodfairness.org.au
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