When harbor officials warned Kenneth Stagnaro of a tsunami heading from Tonga for the Santa Cruz Harbor last weekend, he decided to take his two boats out to sea.
“That’s a great indication that their rebuild they did after 2011 did its job,” said Patrick Lynett, a coastal engineer at USC who for the past decade has been helping cities across California bolster their infrastructure for tsunamis., which Lynett calls “a magnet for tsunamis” due to its position near a major subduction zone beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean that causes major earthquakes and can cause massive tsunamis.
Experts like Lynett were still surprised at how the tsunami was generated and how long the event lasted.It’s rare for a volcanic eruption to be the culprit, Lynett said. Experts were initially caught off-guard by the tsunami’s size and power across the Pacific Ocean. The first major surges came around 11 in the morning, capsizing one of his patrol boats. The evening brought no respite: About 6 p.m., Higgins received a call of a 70-foot yacht and a 90-foot slab of the adjoining concrete dock had broken off and floated down the harbor and toward the ocean.
Throughout the past week, field teams with the state and federal government dispersed along the coastline to chart just how high the waters rose on Saturday and Sunday. “I can only imagine in the future it’s going to get worse, or will be more impacted by sea level rise,” MacLaurie said.
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