Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI WARNING

THAILAND

Swedish tourists weather Thai tsunami scare

The tsunami scare that followed an earth quake in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale, had tourists fleeing the beaches of Thailand and Indonesia for higher grounds.

Published: 11 April 2012 14:08 CEST
Swedish tourists weather Thai tsunami scare

“It was chaos, everyone is running in different directions. We didn’t get any information. It is very stressful and everyone is crying,” tourist Mikaela Clausenius told daily Aftonbladet.

Clausenius told the paper how she and her family had received warning of the expected tsunami while they were lounging by the pool. The family followed the others up on the roof, where they stayed until they recived the all clear.

Similar reports started to come in from other affected areas. Another tourist wrote to the paper that he and his friends fled up to the third floor of their hotel.

“The staff have disappeared. We are on the third floor. We’re hoping it will be eough,” he wrote to the paper.

Swedish travel agencies had begun evacuating tourists from areas affected by the earth quake on Wednesday fearing the effects of a potential tsunami in the region.

“There are thousands of Swedes in the affected provinces,” confirmed Andreas Magnusson of the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok to news agency TT.

Travel companies Ving, Apollo and Fritidsresor on Wednesday urged their clients to leave the beaches of Phuket, Ao Nang, and Krabi due to the fear of a tsunami.

“We are sending text messages informing them that a tsunami warning has been issued and that they should get themselves to the safer areas in the mountains,” said Ving spokeswoman Magdalena Öhrn to TT.

“There are evacuation routes that the authorities in Phuket have made available so there is information everywhere of where to go during a tsunami alert.”

And according to Anders Jörle, spokesperson for the foreign ministry, all the embassies in the region are alerted.

Roberta Alenius, a spokesperson for prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, also confirmed that the prime minister and the government were standing by.

“The government’s crisis group is following what is happening closely and is working on following the set up procedures,” she said to TT.

The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap, MSB), is following the events and are ready to despatch personnel to the area should the situation worsen.

“We could have many there within 24 hours,” said Stina Sjölin, of the MSB to TT.

However, later in the afternoon, Swedes who had headed for higher grounds started to return to their beach resorts as it became clear that the immediate danger was over.

“The situation has calmed down here now,” texted tourist Stefan Söderlund from the small island of Koh Ngai outside of Krabi to Aftonbladet.

The Local/rm

twitter.com/thelocalsweden

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

TSUNAMI

Police call off search for Greenland tsunami missing

Four people are now presumed dead after police called off their search following the landslide and subsequent flood in western Greenland earlier this month, as experts continue to assess the cause of the disaster.

Published: 27 June 2017 11:50 CEST
Police call off search for Greenland tsunami missing
Greenland's flag flying at half mast in Copenhagen. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Scanpix

Three adults and one child, who have not been seen since a tsunami hit the village of Nuugaatsiaq on June 17th, are now presumed to have died in the flood.

Searches using planes helicopters, ships and dinghies were all carried out without turning up any sign of the missing people, reports Danish news agency Ritzau.

Police admitted as early as last week that they did not expected to find the missing persons alive.

The four are thought to have been washed to sea after a landslide fell into the Karrat Fjord on the west coast of the Danish autonomous territory.

Waves hit the village with such force that 11 houses were also dragged into the sea.

Artic Command told Ritzau that the area washed away by the wave measured 1100 by 300 metres.

Several villages in the area remain evacuated in a precaution against further landslides.

While authorities are still alert to the danger of further tsunamis, five villages, as well of the town of Uummannaq, were assessed Saturday as being out of the risk area should further incidents occur.

Researchers remain uncertain as to how the landslide itself was started.

READ ALSO: Experts uncertain on cause of Greenland disaster

David M. Kerrick, a former assistant professor of Mathematics and Physics at The University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, told The Local that he believed the Greenland tsunami to have been caused by an earthquake.

“Right now I am of the opinion that the tsunami in Greenland was caused by an earthquake. In general this has to do with a possible connection, I believe, between events in the Pacific Ring of Fire and the South Sandwich Trench, which ‘moves’ things along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge towards Iceland, impacting North America and Europe,” Kerrick wrote via email.

The Pacific Ring of Fire is an area in the basin of the Pacific Ocean associated with a series of oceanic trenches, volcanoes and plate movements.

The Greenland earthquake may be related to new or existing faults being opened by geophysical changes whose effects have also been seen in other unusual tremors, Kerrick said.

“As I see it, the connection between the Pacific Ring of Fire and the South Sandwich trench moving up along the mid-Atlantic ridge towards Iceland, opens up new or possibly already existing ‘hairline’ faults proceeding from Iceland moving into North America,” the professor wrote.

Experts with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) initially said the tsunami had been started by an earthquake, but began to doubt this after receiving reports of tidal waves 30 kilometres away.

The size of the tidal wave was too great to have been caused by an earthquake of the magnitude measured, GEUS seismologist Peter Voss told DR.

Reports on June 18th suggested an earthquake measuring 4.0 on the Richter scale had struck off the Greenland coast.

Trine Dahl Jensen, a senior researcher with GEUS, told Ritzau the day after the tsunami that earthquakes of that magnitude were “not normal” in western Greenland.

Voss told DR last week that data should be analysed before any conclusions could be made.

“Measurements of earthquakes and landslides resemble each other. We have to find out what started the landslide – whether or not it was an earthquake,” he said.