Jasper County Democrat, Volume 16, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1914 — CAUSES OF TIDAL WAVES. [ARTICLE]

CAUSES OF TIDAL WAVES.

Japan Has Always Been the Worst Sufferer Fr«in These Phenomena. The tidal wave which a few days ago devastated the Island of Sakura in one of the provinces of Japan is not the first disaster of this kind which the Mikado’s empire has suffered. In July, 1896, a great tidal wave swept along the coast of the island of Yezo for nearly 200 miles. Towns were ruined, fertile fields were laid waste. Twenty-seven thousand persons were killed, 5,390 wounded ad 9,313 houses were washed away or wrecked. More than 60,000 persons were made destitute. Iwate Perfecture suffered worse, as more than 23,000 of the dead lived in that province. The Japanese papers- of the time were busy constructing theories as to the cause of the sudden ocean disturbances. Some suggested that a volcanic eruption had taken place far out in the Pacific ocean. Another theory was that a huge cave-ln occurred in the southern part of what is known as the “Great Deep,” stretching more than 700 miles northwest and eastward. The term tidal wave is erroneously applied to almost any unexpected wave that inundates the seacoast or the shore of a great lake. These waves are rarely if ever due to the tides, since the real tidal wave is a phenomenon admitting of exact calculation and prediction; but they may be traced usually to some distant earthquake or violent storm. When an earthquake occurs beneath the sea, the vertical movements of the sea bed generate a great wave which is propagated outward from the center of the Shock and reaches the land after the arrival of the earth wave. In the open sea this wave is so broad that it cannot be perceived; but when it reaches shallow water near the shore it rushes forward as an immense breaker, sometimes 60 feet or more high, and overwhelming everything in its course.

The sandy beach deposits and loose bowlders are swept away, while inland the surface is strewn with debris. The velocity of these great sea waves is greater than the ordinary waves raised by the wind. A submarine earthquake near the coast of Japan in 1854 gave rise to sea waves which traversed (lie whole breadth of the Pacific at a rate of about 370 miles an hour. At Smoda, Japan, the Waves were 30 feet high, while at' San Diego, Cal., they measured only six inches. Such an earthquake wave near the coast of Peru once lifted a gunboat of the United States Navy and landed if a mile inland.

The seaport of Callao was inundated only the other day by a tidal wave, accompanied by an earthquake lasting 55 seconds. The naval school at La Junta and some of the hotels were flooded. A tidal and earthquake wave a few years ago in Ecuador did much damage. Across the Pacific from Ecuador, in Hawaii, the same disturbance was felt, accompanied by a great earthquake wave which did little damage. A hundred miles of beach towns and summer homes from Long Beach to Santa Barbara showed the effects last December of high tide combined with great swells which swept the southern California coast. But Japan always seems to have been the worst sufferer from these disturbances.