http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/science/05tsunami.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fR%2fRevkin%2c%20Andrew%20C%2e
Indonesian Cities Lie in Shadow of Cyclical Tsunami, Scientists Say By ANDREW C. REVKIN Published: December 5, 2006 Two Indonesian cities that escaped the devastating tsunamis of December 2004 are at risk of inundation over the next few decades from undersea earthquakes predicted along the coast of Sumatra, researchers say. Skip to next paragraph The New York Times Related Tsunami Simulations (December 5, 2006) The researchers, using computer models, produced simulations showing that a major earthquake could send a series of waves 15 to 20 feet high sweeping ashore around Padang or Bengkulu, coastal cities of 800,000 and 350,000 just south of the Equator on Sumatra's Indian Ocean coast. Many seismologists say such quakes are inevitable off the coast near those cities. The analysis was published Monday on the Web by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Sundra Fault, a seam in the earth's ever shifting crust beneath the seafloor and just beyond a chain of islands parallel to the coast, generates clusters of great earthquakes roughly every 230 years, according to old records and studies of coral reefs in the region. The reefs lift or sink abruptly after such jolts, with the skewed orientation of successive layers of coral providing a chronology of these seismic shifts. A tsunami in 1797 carried a 200-ton British ship half a mile inland in Padang, and another deadly set of waves struck the coast not long afterward, in 1833, focused more around Bengkulu. Then, however, coastal populations were counted in the thousands, said Kerry Sieh, an author of the study and a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology who has spent decades studying the quake patterns in the area. The other authors are from Caltech and the University of Southern California. Now there are hundreds of times as many people in harm's way, Dr. Sieh said. "We hope that these initial results will help focus educational efforts, emergency preparedness activities, and changes in the basic infrastructure of cities and towns along the Sumatran coast," Dr. Sieh said in a printed statement. Costas E. Synolakis, the director of the Tsunami Research Center of the University of Southern California and an author of the study, said it was a rough initial projection. "The hazard is there," he said. "It is a loaded missile pointing at one million people."
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