Introduction - Tsunami - page 4

1.2.2 The Kwenaitchechat Legend, Pacific

Northwest

1.2.3 Krakatau, August 27, 1883

Van Guest was sweating profusely as he climbed through
the dense jungle above the town of Anjer Lor (Verbeek
1884 ; Myles 1985 ). He stopped to gasp for breath, not
because he was slightly out of shape, but because the sul-
furous fumes burned his lungs. He looked down at the
partially ruined town. There was no sign of life although it
was nearly 10 o'clock in the morning. His head pounded as
the excitement of the scene and the strain of the trek sped
blood through his temples. He did not know if he felt the
thumping of blood in his head or the distant rumbling.
Sometimes both were synchronous, and it made him smile.
This was the chance of a lifetime. No one was paid to do
what he did or had remotely thought to climb to the top of
one of the hills to get the best view. Besides, most of the
townspeople had fled into the jungle after the waves had
come through yesterday and again in the early morning. As
he neared the top of the hill he looked for a spot with a
clearing to the west, reached it, and turned. Beyond laid
purgatory on Earth, the incredible hell of Krakatau in full
eruption (Bryant 2005 ).
As a volcanologist for the Dutch colonial government,
Van Guest was aware of the many eruptions that continually
threatened Dutch interests in the East Indies. Tambora in
1815 was the worst. No one thought that anything else could
be bigger. He had seen Galunggung go up the previous year
with over a hundred villages wiped out. Krakatau had had
an earthquake then, and when it began to erupt in May, the
governor in Batavia had ordered him to investigate. He had
come to this side of the Sunda Strait because he thought he
would be safe 40 km from the eruption. Van Guest tied his
handkerchief over his nose and mouth, slipped on the
goggles to keep the sting from his eyes, and peered through
his telescope across the strait, hoping to catch a glimpse of
the volcano itself through the ash and smoke. Suddenly the
view cleared as if a strong wind had blown the sky clean.
He could see the ocean frothing and churning chaotically.
Only the Rakata peak remained, and it was glowing red.
The smallest peak, Perboewatan, had blown up at 5:30 that
morning. Danan, which was 450 m high, had gone just over
an hour later. Each had sent out a tsunami striking the
coastline of Java and Sumatra in the dark. That is what had
cleared out the town in the early hours.
As he glanced down at the abandoned boats in the bay,
Van Guest noticed that they were all lining up towards the
volcano. Then they drifted quickly out to sea and disap-
peared in the maelstrom. Suddenly, a bolt of yellow opened
in the ocean running across the strait to the northwest and
all the waters in the strait flooded in. Instantly, a cloud of
steam rose to the top of the sky. As Van Guest stood
upright, awestruck, a blast of air flattened him to the ground

It was a cold winter's night along the Cape Flattery coast of the
Pacific Northwest (Heaton and Snavely 1985 ; Geist 1997 ). At
Neeah Bay, the Kwenaitchechat people had eaten and settled
into sleep. Then the ground began to shake violently. The land
rolled from west to east and jerked upwards, leaving the beach
exposed higher above the high-tide line than anyone had seen it
before. Everyone ran out into the moonless night and down to
the beach, where there was less chance in the dark of being
flung into trees or the sides of huts by the shaking. As they fled
onto the beach, the adults began to sink into the sand as if it
were water. The old people were the last to get to the beach, and
when they did, they were yelling frantically for everyone to run
to higher ground. The young men laughed at them, saying that
it was safer in the open. Suddenly the water in the bay began to
recede, far beyond the limit of the lowest tide, further than
anyone had seen it go. Everyone paused and stared at the ocean
as iffor eternity. Then the water began to come back. There was
no sound except for the loud rushing of water swallowing
everything in the bay. As one, all the tribespeople turned and
began to run back to the village, to the canoes. Few got back.
Those that did flung themselves, children, and anything else
they could grab in the dark into the canoes. Then they were all
picked up and swept north into the Straits of Juan de Fuca and
into the forests. The water covered everything on the cape with
only the hills sticking out. When the waters finally receded,
many had drowned. Some canoes were stuck in the trees of the
forest and were destroyed. Some people without any means of
paddling the canoes were swept onto Vancouver Island beyond
Nootka. In the light of day, all trace of the village in Neeah Bay
was gone. So were all the neighboring villages. No sign of life
remained except for the few survivors scattered along the coast
and the animals that had managed to flee into the hills.
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, in Japan, 10 h
later, the residents of villages along the coast at Miyako,
Otsucki, and Tanabe had finished their work for the day and
had gone to sleep (Satake et al. 1996 ). It was cloudy but
calm along the coast. Then at around nine in the evening,
without any preceding earthquake, the long waves started
coming in, 3 m high at Miyako, 2 m at Tanabe. All along
the coast, the sea suddenly surged over the shore without
warning into the low-lying commercial areas of the towns
and into the rice paddies scattered along the coastal plains.
The merchants, fishermen, and farmers had seen such
things before—the small waves that came in like tsunami
but without any earthquake. They were lucky, because if
there had been an earthquake, many people would have
died. Instead, only a few lost their possessions. The events
of that night were just a nuisance thing, of no great

consequence.