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The Leading Edge; February 2005; v. 24; no. 2; p. 124-125; DOI: 10.1190/1.1876032
© 2005 Society of Exploration Geophysicists
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The Asian Tsunami in Sri Lanka—a personal experience

Chris Chapman

Schlumberger Cambridge Research, U.K.

Corresponding author: chapman@cambridge.oilfield.slb.com

Editor's note: This article, written in the immediate aftermath of the disastrous tsunami in December, was originally published in the 11 January 2005 issue of EOS, published by the American Geophysical Union, and is reprinted with permission. An appendum, written somewhat later, that describes the physics of tsunami propagation is posted online at www.agu.org/eos_elec.000929e1.html

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

At 9:30 a.m. local time (03:30 GMT) on Boxing Day, 26 December, my wife Lillian and I were eating breakfast at the beachside Triton Hotel, Ahungalla, Sri Lanka (about 30 km north of Galle). The previous week we had been touring Sri Lanka, ending our trip traveling through Yala National Park and Galle—places we hardly knew of before but images of which are now indelibly imprinted on the world (of about 150 staying at the Yala Safari Game Lodge, only 11 survived; the centre of Galle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a 16–17th century Portuguese/Dutch fort and port, is essentially gone).


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  		Figure 1. A view from the hotel grounds looking northwards along the beach. This photo was taken at about 10:05 local time and shows the water at its lowest level. The normal water level can be seen from the contrasting colours on the rocks, and the steeper part of the beach. The men with white shirts on the right of the picture are hotel staff warning people to leave the beach.

 
The Triton Hotel is a three-story building, well designed by the famous Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Dawa and, thankfully, solidly constructed in 1981. As we finished breakfast, the sea slowly rose a few meters to the level of the hotel's swimming pool and a small wave gently rolled through the pool and hotel lobby.

Mention of a high tide immediately seemed wrong—Lillian and I had been walking on the beach several times and there was essentially no tide and the sea was calm. I said to Lillian, "There must have been an earthquake in the Indian Ocean" but with no previous experience assumed it to be small. Lillian, having suffered 30 years of the English understatement, immediately went and spoke to the manager and warned that worse might be to . . . [Full Text of this Article]






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