Word: tsunamis
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...what causes a tsunami...
Read "How Prepared Are Countries for a Tsunami...
Bachelet's government has suggested it was working with flawed data from its navy. Scientists say a tsunami's likelihood and force depend largely on the amount of vertical movement an earthquake causes at the sea floor. The 9.0-magnitude quake that caused the devastating South Asia tsunami of 2004 yielded potent vertical displacement of about 16 ft. (5 m); Chile's Saturday temblor, centered just off the Pacific coast about midway between the capital, Santiago, and Concepción, is thought to have involved significant vertical motion as well. Fortunately, no other countries in the Pacific Basin were affected...
...perplexing misstep by a country that has seen what kind of tsunami an earthquake this strong can hurl - as it did in 1960, when a 9.5-magnitude quake, the most powerful ever recorded, killed more than 1,600 people. Inexplicably, in the minutes after Saturday's quake, Chilean officials told coastal communities like Constitución that there was little if any danger of tsunamis. Chilean television networks later aired video of tall, destructive waves pushing houses, cars and boats through fishing villages. "We ran desperately up the hill and watched how the sea washed everything away," a woman...
Remarkable, that is, in terms of coping with what happened on land. Disaster officials now say the majority of Chile's fatalities may have resulted from the temblor-generated tsunami waves that slammed coastal towns like Constitución, where 350 people were killed. And that points up the only area in which Chile and its government may have fallen short in this disaster. (See pictures of the earthquake in Chile...