Recently, the researchers have revealed the evidence of a destructive earthquake that brought a tsunami on the Kauai’s Island about 500 years ago and there is a possibility that a similar event could hit Hawaii’s shores in the coming future.
The Live Science reported, “The earthquake with the magnitude of 9.0 happened in Alaska and brought 30-foot tall waves to Hawaii between 1425 and 1665. In contrast, the resulting tsunami was at least 3 times the size of a tsunami that caused damage in Hawaii in 1946.”
The study is published in the ‘Geophysical Research Letters’ journal. The researchers investigated a sinkhole 328 feet from shore with walls 23 feet high. David Burney, a paleoecologist at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kalaheo, discovered the site back in the late 1990s, but his theory that a massive tsunami left the ocean debris found in the sinkhole was not verified until now.
In a recent study, Honolulu officials have modified their tsunami evacuation maps in case a destructive tsunami hits the region of around a million residents. As per the American Geophysical Union press release, the evacuation areas will be more than double in some locations on the new maps.
A tsunami, to the size of the one in the study is projected to happen once every 1000 years, making the odds that it will happen in any given year quite small at 1%.
Butler, a geophysicist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa stated that, “People have to at least appreciate that the possibility is there.”
The sinkhole left by the tsunami that struck 500 years ago holds a layer of sediment with distinct traces of the ocean: coral fragments, mollusk shells and beach sand. The sediment remained a mystery until the 2011 Tohoku earthquake hit Japan and pulled tall, damaging waves inland to flood the island nation.
Butler further stated that, “The Japan’s earthquake was bigger than almost any seismologist ever thought. The live coverage showed the devastation it caused, I wonder, did we get it right in Hawaii? Are our evacuation zones the correct size?”