Patiti Point and South Beach

According to the director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, Charles McCreery (the Dominion Post reported, Friday) “You have a lot of earthquakes, you’re right on the border between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, so you have a big seismic risk, and you have some history of tsunami. If a really big earthquake rips, it will send waves to New Zealand,” the Dominion Post quoted him as saying. Niwa principal scientist Rob Bell said when a tsunami hit New Zealand after coming thousands of kilometers, the biggest waves could arrive hours after the first ones. “What happens is they reflect and bounce off undersea shelf systems. It’s like creating a disturbance in a pond, the waves will hit other waves. It gets pretty chaotic,” Bell was quoted as saying.

On the morning of the recent Samoa tsunami people watching breakfast television were getting mixed messages. One of the big trawlers came out of the harbour and went to anchor. Later in the day the warning was cancelled. It brought it home to residents of the south end of town that tsunamis, although historically never catastrophic, remain a very real possibility. The foreshore with its self-seeding shrubs and gorse and the council’s plantings provides good protection, as does the railway line at the foot of the clay bank. Especially the north end of the South Beach No.1 Store is at risk of inundation in the event that the arrival of a tsunami coincided with high tide.