All Shook Up. Did The Earth Move for You?

Its been barely three weeks since a massive earthquake struck the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Already the international press and television coverage of this appalling event has quietly slipped from the nightly news and all but disappeared from the front pages of most newspapers.

What we get now are distressing photographs of the displaced residents, huddled under meagre tarpaulins, squatting amongst the ruins of their houses, or small children wandering the rubble-filled streets crying for their parents. These photographs, which now appear in the Sunday supplements, will no doubt earn accolades and awards for roving photojournalists at forthcoming international competitions. Soon, the ongoing plight of the citizens of Sulawesi will slip from the consciousness of the reading public even while rescue workers continue searching among the debris for the estimated 5000 missing souls on top of the 2,100 dead already accounted for.

These unstable tectonic plates have been having a busy time of it around the Indonesian Archipelago of late with a series of major shakes affecting the islands of Lombok and Bali. Lombok was unlucky enough to have two sizeable quakes within a two- week period, driving tourists away from its idyllic beaches and virtually destroying the popular Gili Islands and killing over 500 people.

Given that tourism now accounts for about 97% of these island’s GDP, the pain of this latest catastrophe will last for many years to come before the travelling public deem the region ‘safe’ once again to visit.

Indonesia, resting as it does on the ‘ring of fire’ and straddling the impossibly deep Java Trench is prone to these frequent earthquakes with between four to five thousand shakes occurring each year. With the ever-increasing sophistication of modern instrumentation,  seismic detectors now record over 500,000 earthquakes around the world each and every year!

Many of these quakes occur deep in the earth’s crust and are hardly felt and, if they are, are referred to as ‘minor’ tremors.

This sometimes shaking of the surface of the Earth is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth’s Lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Many are so violent as to toss people and livestock around like bits of flotsam and more often than not will destroy entire cities and surrounding villages.

Sulawesi was a classic example of this kind of activity.

Unfortunately, there is another more sinister side to earthquakes when the epicentre of a large seismic event is located offshore. If during an earthquake, the seabed is displaced sufficiently, the result is often the generation of a tsunami. One of the worst of these occurred in 2004 when a magnitude 8.5 earthquake occurred less than 20km off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, causing massive destruction to the province of Ache.

The violent shaking had barely ceased when suddenly, without warning, the ocean retreated from the shore almost to the horizon only to reappear a few minutes later as a giant wave some 60ft high which raced towards land at speeds estimated to have been up to 600kmh!

The resulting devastation in Ache was catastrophic. Over 200,000 souls perished under a mountain of rushing water which added even more devastation to the already battered landscape up to three kilometres inland.

Such was the power of this earthquake that, once it had inflicted its terrifying destruction in the East, it then moved outwards and began heading due West. As it travelled across the Java Sea it rapidly began to pick up speed like a runaway locomotive until it reached a dizzying 850 km per hour.

Directly in its path was the tranquil resort town of Phuket in Thailand where thousands of international residents and locals were enjoying a beautiful, post - Christmas morning. Once again, the ocean retreated and then, seconds later the shoreline was engulfed by a wall of water, swallowing thousands of tourists and locals alike along with a swathe of hotels that lined the beach.

To understand the unbelievable power of this earthquake, and the resulting tsunami is to note that this giant wave continued its deadly westward journey, leaving Thailand behind and heading for the idyllic island of Sri Lanka, which nestles, in azure blue waters at the foot of India. With no warning, the tsunami smashed into the Galle Coast with such incredible power as to lift a fully laden passenger train off its tracks and carry it over a 1Km inland!

Over 1700 people perished in that one incident alone.

And still, onwards it travelled, leaving in its wake, a tide of unbelievable destruction that took years to repair. The wave then swept up the west coast of Kerala, in India obliterating thousands of coastal dwellers and, as if this was not enough it travelled an astonishing 12,000 miles across the Indian Ocean to cause even more mayhem on the East coast of Somalia in Africa.

Mother Nature can be a rather powerful beast!

Ordinarily, subduction earthquakes under magnitude 7.5 on the Richter Magnitude Scale do not cause tsunamis.

However, the residents of Sulawesi will draw cold comfort from this scientific fact as the recent undersea earthquake measured exactly that precise figure. Defying science, a deadly tsunami rose up and ploughed into the coast travelling over a mile inland, taking with it untold hundreds of residents who had gathered on the beach thinking it was the safest place to be.

Bali, where I live was, thankfully spared any serious damage but did endure some serious swaying resulting from the quake in Lombok some eighty or so kilometres away.

It is rather disquieting when at midnight one’s bed begins to sway and shake and ceiling fans start to swing gaily from side to side while the water in the swimming pool slops over the sides.

Disquieting is probably hardly the right adjective to describe the sensation, as really, for about thirty seconds, serious fear engulfs one as you realize that this is an event over which you have absolutely no control.

I can now safely say that yes, the earth did indeed move for me, but not as much as it moved for the people of Lombok and Sulawesi so please spare a thought for them. 

Paul v Walters is the best selling author of several best selling novels and, when he is not cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali, he scribbles for several international travel and vox pop journals.