Tsunami warning - Australia

[matmar]

Large earthquake in Solomon Islands places East Coast of Australia on tsunami warning.

 

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQ20003.txt

[mipps]

I live by the sea in NZ .... it had me watching out my window every 30 secs

[celle]

Large earthquake in Solomon Islands places East Coast of Australia on tsunami warning.

 

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQ20003.txt

 

I live by the sea in NZ .... it had me watching out my window every 30 secs

 

The quake/ tsunami killed at least 15 people in the Solomon Islands, but not a ripple was recorded in New Zealand or Australia.

 

Here in NZ the tsunami alert came into effect for civil defence authorities, but was soon downgraded.

[qld cruiser]

The quake/ tsunami killed at least 15 people in the Solomon Islands, but not a ripple was recorded in New Zealand or Australia.

 

Here in NZ the tsunami alert came into effect for civil defence authorities, but was soon downgraded.

 

 

Hi celle, it certainly gave us a wake-up call here in OZ.

nobody seemed to know what was going on. The government will have to work out some better warning system.

people were panicking around Cairns, driving out of town to higher ground, creating a bottleneck of traffic. beaches all down the coast as far apart as Cooktown to Sydney closed. schools, even hospitals stopped elective surgery.

we live only a couple of hundred metres from the beach, and if we hadn't been watching the TV, we wouldn't have been aware of what was going on.

I feel so sorry for the people of the Solomon Islands, as time goes by more deaths are being reported.

kindest regards, Lorraine:) :)

[celle]

Hi celle, it certainly gave us a wake-up call here in OZ.

nobody seemed to know what was going on. The government will have to work out some better warning system.

people were panicking around Cairns, driving out of town to higher ground, creating a bottleneck of traffic. beaches all down the coast as far apart as Cooktown to Sydney closed. schools, even hospitals stopped elective surgery.

we live only a couple of hundred metres from the beach, and if we hadn't been watching the TV, we wouldn't have been aware of what was going on.

I feel so sorry for the people of the Solomon Islands, as time goes by more deaths are being reported.

kindest regards, Lorraine:) :)

 

Yeah, we had a similar, media-hyped scare about 9 months ago, with no-one seeming to know what was happening. Although the civil defence authorities knew the tsunami warning had been downgraded, they did not think to alert the media and consequently some people panicked.

 

The first we knew of it was when we received a phone call in the middle of the night from our daughter (who is in the UK) who had heard of the tsunami alert from UK media.

 

By that time, the NZ authorities had realised there was no danger, but the media had not.

 

There was a big hoo-ha afterwards and the lines of communication have been more clearly defined. This time, there was no media beat-up and most people were not aware that there had initialy been a tsunami alert.