Jan. 8, 2008 — If a strong earthquake hits run like hell uphill, because a tsunami could be on the way, UVI physics professor and tsunami expert Roy Watlington said Tuesday at a meeting of the St. John Historical Society.
"People have to know what to do," he told the approximately 50 people gathered at Nazareth Lutheran Church for the organization's monthly meeting. "Don't wait for the government to tell you."
It's prudent to run even if you feel foolish.
"You'll be alive and foolish," he said.
Watlington showed a photo of a group of people fleeing from a huge wall of water in the Dec. 24, 2006, tsunami in Sumatra.
"Swimming is not a factor," he said. "It's likely most of these people lost their lives."
If an earthquake occurs in the V.I. Trench, located between St. Thomas/St. John and St. Croix, residents will only have a few minutes before the tsunami hits, he said.
While strides have been made toward a tsunami warning system, with some buoys installed in the region, more work needs to be done, Watlington said. Additional warning buoys are in the works.
Most pressing is the need to alert authorities in the Virgin Islands round the clock if a tsunami threatens, Watlington said. And the territory needs to install tsunami evacuation-route signs to let people know the best way uphill, he said.
An earthquake that registers about 6.2 to 6.5 on the Richter Scale is the threshold for tsunamis, Watlington said. In only about half of all tsunamis does the water recede from harbors before flowing back in, he said.
"Fifty percent of the time the water comes in first," he said, debunking the myth that the water always goes out of the harbor when a tsunami arrives.
Watlington and St. Thomas resident Shirley Lincoln are the authors of a book about the 1867 tsunami called Disasters and Disruption in 1867. Residents got a double whammy that year, thanks to a hurricane that hit on Oct. 29 and the tsunami that followed a Nov. 18 earthquake.
While the Richter Scale didn't exist at the time, estimates put the 1867 earthquake at a 7.2 to a 7.5, Watlington said. It was felt as far south as Grenada.
About 500 to 600 people died in the Danish West Indies — now the U.S. Virgin Islands — and the British Virgin Islands during the Oct. 29 hurricane. This was the hurricane that sank the Rhone, now a popular dive site in the British Virgin Islands. Watlington said 150 to 160 people died on the Rhone.
While the tsunami in Charlotte Amalie Harbor is usually mentioned when the subject of the 1867 tsunami comes up, Watlington and Lincoln described what happened in Frederiksted, St. Croix.
"The wave penetrated through the streets of Frederiksted," Watlington said.
The tsunami went about a mile inland from Frederiksted Harbor, pushing the U.S. ship Monongahela up on what is now Strand Street at about the same location a large buoy came ashore in 1999's Hurricane Lenny.
Sailors from that ship are buried in the Frederiksted Lutheran Church cemetery, Watlington said. While only 20 people died in the 1867 tsunami, if a similar tsunami happened today the loss of life would be huge because of the number of people living, working and visiting along the shoreline.
"In 1867, most people were inland working on plantations," he said. Most of those who died were aboard ships.
There would be a huge disruption in the territory's economy, he said.
Showing a photo of cruise ships lined up at the Havensight dock on St. Thomas, he said that those ships would only have to tilt slightly for people to die from falling objects.
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