Ever since my wife got her masters in Geotechnical Engineering at Berkeley in the late 1990s I’ve been pretty fascinated with the science behind earthquakes, liquifaction zones and how all of that effects the place that I call home, the San Francisco Bay Area. I used to read her text books for pleasure reading and learned quite a bit. The Indo quake of December 26, 2004 and the subsequent massive tsunami that followed fascinated me from that day forward. I’ve been surfing for most of my life and have spent a lot of time in the water next to coasts all over the world. I was on the big island of Hawaii last week on the evening of the Japan quake on March 10, 2011 (Hawaii Time). Needless to say there was quite a bit of drama that night at the hotel.

And rightly so. Our hotel was on the west coast of the big island, directly facing Japan. I found out about the quake and tsunami warning while in the check out line at a local grocery store around 9pm Hawaii Time. By 10:30pm at the hotel there were some anxious guests rushing with their belongings heading to their rental cars in the parking lot. The security manager in the lobby put me at ease a bit when he said they would start making decisions around midnight. At that point the tsunami was expected to hit Hawaii around 3:30am Friday morning March 11. I had already sussed out the shoreline earlier that day as I was looking for any wave to surf. Since it was basically shin high surf, I could see the potential of the reefs out front if there were a true west swell or a southwest swell. The shoreline was jagged but there was no natural harbor or crescent shape to the area of out front of the hotel. Local shoreline topography is crucial to the damage a tsunami can cause. I also noted that our hotel’s 2nd floor, the main lobby floor, was about 30 ft above sea level. We were on the 5th floor so that put us roughly 65ft above sea level. No knock came between 11:30pm and 3am so we were not going anywhere.

I had set my alarm for 3am and started watching the local live news out of Honolulu. There was a live camera on the beach/ocean at Wakiki. By 4am it was clear the ocean was not acting normal. This thing was legit.

At sunrise there were some hotel staff pumping out a lagoon level restaurant structure but otherwise no visible damage to the beach front or the lagoon feature of the hotel. A hotel and some store fronts in Kona, about 25 miles to the south, were effected with water damage but no injuries as far as I know. My birthday vacation was a blast and we had a great time. However, It was difficult to watch the videos of destruction and the tremendous loss of life and property. A 9.0 is a massive quake.

Subduction fault quakes are the most likely candidates to cause tsunamis. The Japan quake was a subduction fault quake. The Indo quake was also a subduction fault quake. Here is a cool gif that shows just how active that area was leading up to the primary quake as well as the following aftershocks:

Here is what the quake sounded like 3,000 ft below the surface. The video is obviously not in time with the quake but just adds color to the destruction later from the tsunami. “The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB) has posted the eerie sound online. The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), a network of underground observatories more than a thousand meters below sea level, made the chilling recording as the quake struck. According to Science Daily, the sounds of Japan’s 9.0-magnitude quake “have been accelerated 16 times so that they can be audible to human ears.” The red and yellow colors on the spectogram represent the most intense parts of the quake.”

My heart goes out to the Japanese people and those effected by this massive event of the Earth’s crust doing its thing.

Dropping down from 35,000 ft the 737 hit major turbulence on the way down into Tucson today. Very cool cloud formations.

And so it begins. 2010 is flying by and I thought I would attempt a project for the month – a blog post a day.

I feel like I’m limping into Friday for the second week in a row. Work has been as busy as ever the past two weeks. Still finding inspiration everyday somehow. Good people and still good products.

Hope the Giants make the playoffs. Cain giving up 5 runs in the first game of the series is not a good sign.

Go Giants, Go Hokies!!

Excellent vacation back at my other *home*, the Outer Bank of North Carolina.