The other kind of tsunami relief

June 16, 2005

Dear Leslie,

The rebels have complained that assistance has not reached Tamil areas fast enough since the disaster. The last time I visited my friend Julie she talked about how much she loves her house overlooking the bay in Trinidad but said earthquakes scare her. This morning, one news program locating the 7.0 quake off the Northern California coast used Trinidad as a reference point. Hearing there were no injuries was a relief. I haven't been able to contact her yet, but if she was home Julie surely wondered if this one was going to slide her house off the cliff.

I didn't think she would have to worry about tsunamis way up there but read that 100 people were evacuated from low-lying areas in Trinidad. That's about a third of the population. The odd thing is, there are almost no areas in Trinidad you'd think of as low lying. The town is built on headlands that soar nearly 200 feet above sea level.

Everybody living below Katy's Smokehouse was evacuated. Julie's house is only about 200 yards from Katy's Smokehouse and not quite as elevated.

The tsunami in South Asia last December reached a maximum height of 100 feet when it went inland, almost as high as the tallest building in Cape Girardeau. A tsunami would have to be gigantic to threaten Katy's Smokehouse.

My memories of Katy's Smokehouse are idyllic. After a wet and chilly day of hunting agates on the beach with girlfriends, we often stopped at Katy's for smoked albacore or salmon. Now Katy's Smokehouse is the dividing line for tsunami evacuations.

The tsunami last December in Southeast Asia has made everyone more aware of the danger earthquakes pose to coastal dwellers, but people on the Northcoast already know. A tsunami killed 11 people in Crescent City after the huge Alaskan Good Friday earthquake in 1964. This time Crescent City activated its tsunami warning system, resulting in chaos in the streets as 4,000 people took off for higher ground.

On the pier in Trinidad, customers at the Seascape Restaurant, home of the Hangtown Fry oyster omelet, quickly left when the tsunami warning circulated. The food is very good at the Seascape. You'd have to be concerned to desert it.

The stories about this quake also refer to the 7.2 earthquake that hit the Northcoast Nov. 8, 1980. That was my first big one. I awoke to the sound of the water from our fish tank sloshing onto the floor, lights flashing in the sky. The next day we learned the death toll: a family whose car dove off an overpass the quake had knocked down.

DC and I were both in San Francisco though not yet together when the quake hit in 1989. That quake was about the same size as the one west of Trinidad, but the epicenter was on land. Phones were down for days. I was further away from the major damage than DC was. She rode her bicycle around the Sunset district, mouth agape at the devastation.

Earthquakes can be scary, but they are also something else: reminders of how unutterably powerful nature is. Just when we think we can control nature -- we've dammed all the worthwhile rivers, we've harnessed the atom (well, almost), we're unlocking the genetic code -- nature provides another lesson in humility the human race is still struggling to learn.

Love, Sam

-- Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.