more articles like this

Historic Tsunami
updated: Jan 29, 2013, 8:23 AM

By Edhat Subscriber

Is it true that about 100 years ago there was a tsunami that hurled waters all the way up to Anapamu Street?

That would cover a lot of people and real estate (and pets) if it happened today. Is there an alert system in place other than Edhat for that?

Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 368470	2013-01-29 08:26 AM
someone sure yanked your chain!
COMMENT 368474	2013-01-29 08:31 AM
No, it was about 200 years ago. All you have to do is Google " santa barbara tsunami".
COMMENT 368475P	2013-01-29 08:31 AM
According to Wikipedia it was in 1812 there was such a tsunami.
SBJULES	2013-01-29 08:43 AM
I think that's why laguna street got that name
NEIGHBOR	2013-01-29 08:43 AM
There was a significant earthquake Dec 21, 1812 that did damage to Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez & La Purisima Missions. The La Purisima Mission was so badly damaged that its site was abandoned and the mission was rebuilt across the valley. There are reports of a resulting tsunami along the South Coast but opinions vary.
COMMENT 368487	2013-01-29 08:44 AM
Wikipedia is not always accurate, but there was a tsunami. There is no alert system other than ocean buoys, if an ( large)earthquake happened in the channel or farther out to sea we would probably not have long before the wave hit ( but remember it takes a certain type of earthquake to create a tsunami ). But we do get warnings from news stations, radio etc. after an earthquake that could cause a surge or wave, and signs are posted by the beach that says to get to higher ground. I've been here 33 yrs and never had to run for higher ground. Only heard a few warnings over the years but wasn't like evacuation warnings, only " we could see a surge of a couple feet.
COMMENT 368489P	2013-01-29 08:51 AM
The water made it all the way to the bottom of the mission steps
COMMENT 368498	2013-01-29 09:28 AM
December 21, 1812 Southern California Tsunami - Santa Barbara Narrative Passage from Lander, et al. (1993) (quoting Trask (1856)): "The sea was observed to recede from the shore during the continuance of the shocks, and left the harbor dry for a considerable distance, when it returned in five or six heavy rollers, which overflowed the plain on which Santa Barbara is built. The inhabitants saw the recession of the sea, and being aware of the danger on its return, fled to the adjoining hills near the town to escape the probable deluge. ... The sea, on its return flowed inland little more than half a mile, and reached the lower part of town, doing but a trifling damage, destroying three small adobe buildings." Return To: December 21, 1812 Damage Summary December 21, 1812 Main Page Past Tsunamis Page WC/ATWC Home Page
BULLSEYEB	2013-01-29 10:10 AM
December 21, 1812 Huh. The Mayans had it wrong. They were 200 years late with their prediction! Hahaha!
COMMENT 368522	2013-01-29 10:40 AM
Also must remember SB was somewhat of a marsh in the middle. It was filled up with trash and such to build it up. That's were you get names like Laguna and Salsipuedes(get out if you can). I remember heavy rains would cause significant flooding on the eastside because of low lying areas. This was in the 70's, have much better drainage now than then. Although some low lying areas still get a bit flooded, but not at the scale it was once was.
COMMENT 368525	2013-01-29 10:43 AM
No, but it is unclear. All accounts of the 1812 tsunami are established in 1856 (above) and in 1864. From our distinguished geology department at UCSB: Re 1812 Tsunami: "It must be noted that there is not one shred of first hand evidence for the wild and inflammatory newspaper account cited [referring to the tsunami], which was written 52 years after the event. Not a shred." There is no evidence of the tsunami in the local geology either and they do leave obvious scars. For the future, unless there is a dramatic change of tectonic regime, the faults in the Channel will not generate a significant tsunami and are not a tsunami threat. The areas that can generate deadly tsunamis in Santa Barbara are across the Pacific, such as near Japan or off the coast of Alaska. We should have plenty of warning.
COMMENT 368526	2013-01-29 10:45 AM
Laguna Street is named for the estuary/lagoon that went up to the high school athletic fields,that it bordered.(Where Mission creek flowed in ancient times.) I heard that the tsunami made it to Carillo St. but there were far fewer buildings and structures back then.
COMMENT 368537	2013-01-29 10:58 AM
The sea was angry that day, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup.
COMMENT 368551P	2013-01-29 11:20 AM
525 - Interesting - thanks for adding that information. Good to know.
COMMENT 368552	2013-01-29 11:26 AM
The 1812 tsunami was related to a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in the Santa Barbara Channel that is believed to have come from a fault under Santa Cruz Island. The tsunami lifted a ship that was anchored in Refugio Bay and dumped it half a mile up Refugio Canyon and then pulled the ship back out to sea. The tsunami was reported as for north as San Francisco and waves washed inland three blocks in Ventura. Aftershocks continued nearly four months after the quake.
COMMENT 368556P	2013-01-29 11:31 AM
For what it is worth, the City of SB has a TSUNAMI RESPONSE PLAN, which can be found at: http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/58EC357E-965F-4BA5-B767-465DF82FB3F0/0/2012SBTsunamiPlanFinalDraft.pdf
COMMENT 368557P	2013-01-29 11:32 AM
537, Thanks for that!
COMMENT 368576	2013-01-29 12:39 PM
368556P - If there is ever another massive earthquake centered in the channel, between the city and the islands, you can take you tsunami response plan and chuck it out the window because there would be at most a minute or two before the wave hit.
COMMENT 368587	2013-01-29 12:52 PM
@522---"SB was somewhat of a marsh in the middle. It was filled up with trash and such to build it up." Really? I'd like to know more about this.
COMMENT 368591	2013-01-29 01:00 PM
It is always nice to find some humor in these columns. Amid all the fascinating accounts of the tsunami is the statement by 525 from UCSB that it never happened. Also, it never will happen because the fault line is not great enough. Today's newspaper carried a story that they want to install an $80 million earthquake warning system patterned after the one in Japan.
COMMENT 368618	2013-01-29 01:22 PM
368525 - Right. And in the history of earthquake science there has never been a 7+ earthquake at a previously unknown fault or at a fault that was not thought to be capable of such a large earthquake. Just cuz yur scientists duzzint mean ya know everything.
COMMENT 368629	2013-01-29 01:39 PM
The alert system I use is the Weather Channel app on my Android phone. How you set it up is add the weather channel widget to your home screen, choose Santa Barbara as your location, or let it use GPS to track you, and have it display all weather alerts, or just the severe ones. This can also show flood warnings, severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, high wind warnings, etc. It is silent by default, so you may want to add a audio alert in addition to it. Also be aware that there can be a delay in issuing alerts, so if there is shaking, getaway from the coast and head to a higher elevation, be it a building or the hills. Tsunami.gov is a good resource as well.
COMMENT 368634	2013-01-29 01:49 PM
There is an old map of SB on line dated 1853 called Preliminary Sketch of Santa Barbara prepared by the US Coast Survey. I found it on a site called raremaps (dot) com. On it you can see a small square in the center which is the Presidio. Just to the east is the end of El Estero, which seems to have come up to almost where Canon Perdido St is today. It would not have taken much of a surge for water to wash up a few more blocks, especially with nothing in its path.
COMMENT 368670	2013-01-29 03:03 PM
Isla Vista is actually one of the most dangerous in terms of tsunami. It has had local tsunamis caused by offshore landslides. Past slides and the escarpment are visisble on google earth. With the source so close to shore, there will be little time between the earthquake and the wave hitting IV.
COMMENT 368698	2013-01-29 03:47 PM
Chumash oral histories speak of a tsunami.
COMMENT 368711	2013-01-29 04:08 PM
Well 618, I never said that there are no unmapped faults, nor do I know everything, but I know geology and plate tectonics. Good thing too because part of my job is helping you be safe from geologic hazards. I do know that due to oil exploration the Channel is geologically one of the most extensively mapped areas in the ocean. But faults be damned, I'm talking about stresses of the tectonic scale. This area is marked by right lateral transverse faulting between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. Major tsunamis are typically caused by well developed subduction zones at convergent plate boundaries (Chile, Japan, Aleutians). So unless something completely changes and the Pacific Plate resumes subduction under the North American Plate then locally we should be free of major tsunami triggers. FYI this change of tectonic regime would take a 100 million years or so to develop. So science that. Dude.
COMMENT 368712	2013-01-29 04:10 PM
670 - I demand citations.
COMMENT 368728	2013-01-29 04:18 PM
avalon at los banos = tsunami
COMMENT 368794	2013-01-29 06:06 PM
yes its true
COMMENT 368828P	2013-01-29 08:06 PM
@591 - I believe even if local quakes cannot generate a large tsunami, it may be possible for a more distant quake to do so.
COMMENT 368840P	2013-01-29 08:39 PM
@711, I had heard that the tsunami threat in the Santa Barbara Channel is due to the possibility of submarine landslides, rather than subduction faults. True or false?
COMMENT 368881	2013-01-30 06:18 AM
is the city going to do anything about the tsunami that affects Castillo street under the freeway? That street is falling apart after all the money they spent trying to "dry" it up!
COMMENT 368886	2013-01-30 06:45 AM
The lower part of the City was a lowland much like a delta for the three creeks that flowed to the Ocean and it was so low that it was essentially a marsh in the wet season. It has been filled in a great deal over the years to create buildable land. Very high tides came inland several hundred feet. Even a relatively small tsunami would have been able to send a surge inland for a considerable distance at least as far as the Presidio or what is now Canon Perdido street. The elevation begins to climb at a higher rate once the topography reaches the Cota/DeLaGuerra street area. This can be seen clearly from the lower (baseball field) area of Santa Barbara High school. This is also the area that often floods in heavy rains all the way down to the ocean. It is a little better now, since the crosstown flood control system was constructed taking floodwaters from the lower eastside over to Mission Creek.
COMMENT 368899	2013-01-30 07:25 AM
Ditto on the underwater landslide in the channel causing tsunami. But hey, what do Art Sylvester and Tanya Atwater know? We estimate that approximately 1.75 km3 has been displaced by this slide during the Holocene. This feature is a complex compound submarine landslide that contains both surfical slump blocks and mud flows in three distinct segments. Each segment is composed of a distinct head scarp, down-dropped head block and a slide debris lobe. Based on our interpretation of the multibeam bathymetry and seismic reflection profiles we modeled the potential tsunami that may have been produced from one of the three surfical lobes of the Goleta slide. This model shows that a 10 m high wave could have run ashore along the cliffs of the Goleta shoreline.
FLICKA	2013-01-30 07:35 AM
After the huge Alaska earthquake in 1969, we had warnings of the possiblity of a Tidal Wave. Many cottages along Miramar Beach had plywood put over the windows, just in case. Grandma told us that after the 1925 earthquake here there was a warning, really scared her because our family lived by the beach, next to the Miramar.
COMMENT 368911P	2013-01-30 07:50 AM
537 for the win.
COMMENT 368932	2013-01-30 08:39 AM
537! HA HA HA! Love it.
COMMENT 368970	2013-01-30 10:13 AM
Keep in mind a "Tidal wave" is NOT the same as a "Tsunami" The former is caused by a strong high tide meeting the off shore flow of water typically from a large river. The latter, a Tsunami, is caused by seismic activity such as an earthquake somewhere generating a shock wave transferred into the ocean. They can also be caused by seismic activiity such as a sudden uplifting or sinking of land under the ocean or by other underwater seismic activity such as landslides caused by slumping land masses. All of these result in displacing or movement of massive amounts of land initiating one or more impulses which pass through the water like the waves or ripples just like when you throw a stone into a lake or pond. The wave or surge accelerates and rises as the impulse reaches shallow waters along the shorelines.
COMMENT 368996	2013-01-30 11:05 AM
Anapamu St is not far up from the natural coastline, most of lower downtown is a landfill.
FRANKFROST	2013-01-30 02:29 PM
I excavated an ancient Greek city in western Crete that was destroyed by a tsunami in AD 365. We found deep water foraminifera lodged in deposits against foundations 200 M from the coast. Only a tsunami could have moved shells from 30 M depths so far inland. Of course there are many contemporary accouts of this earthquake/tsunami so the shells only confirm the event. Maybe the 1812 tsunami caused the Hope Ranch shipwreck. The few timbers are approximately this date.
DEE D	2013-01-30 03:19 PM
There is a statement that always accompanies investment opportunities: Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. This is always true in a complex system, and the geotectonic and kinetic forces associated with earth changes is exactly such a system. We are on the coast of the world's largest sea on a continually evolving planet and universe. There are no guarantees. It does make sense to try to anticipate and prepare for coastal events to the extent that we can anticipate and can afford. The things that have caught me in life have been those that were completely unexpected.
COMMENT 369137P	2013-01-30 03:53 PM
There has been found, tangible, credible evidence in North American deserts, of an abundance of marine life. In fact, there is lingering evidence that oceans once covered areas that are now dry land, heavily populated by non-marine flora and fauna. It has been speculated that there have been several great inundations, or floods, caused by major seismic activity over many millennia. Who knows which legends are pure myth, and which are based on lore passed down by countless generations of human beings?
COMMENT 369148	2013-01-30 04:12 PM
711 The Santa Barbara Science Dude! Love It!
AUNTIE S.	2013-01-30 05:19 PM
LOL 537. You and |George Costanza.
COMMENT 369232	2013-01-30 07:40 PM
Here;s the deal on tsunamis...VERY hard to develop any sort of plan or warning system based on the uncertainties of where it will/can/does happen because there could be literally NO warning (undersea landslide or rift right off the shore). There are plans in place for what to do when we get some notice....As a point of interest, CA is most interested in what is known as the "Cascadia Subsidence Zone" in either Washington or Oregon which could purportedly spawn a sizable tsunami. Suggest worrying about more common threats such as earthquake or fire!   S
COMMENT 369356	2013-01-31 08:46 AM
But the City spent thousands to post signs next to the shore and ocean to tell all of those people that did not know tsunamis came from the ocean (not the sky) that they were in a tsunami zone.

35% of comments on this page were made by Edhat Community Members.