On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 17:13:52 EST, Joe Abley said: > I'm no expert, but I'd imagine that any under-sea damage would be > isolated to shallow approach to shore, and that the cable would be well > below the wave action while the tsunami was in deep water. Cables are > generally trenched pretty deep on the approach to shore as protection > against dragging anchors, but I don't know what protection that would > give against the undertow from a 10m-high wave.
News reports say the actual quake was a "thrust" fault - meaning that on the one side of the fault line, the rock went down, and on the other it went up, forming a cliff where it used to be flat. The cables may be trenched near shore, and in deep water they're safe from wave action - but if the cable happens to go across the fault line, the carefully-laid no-slack cable is suddenly going literally off the edge of a small underwater cliff. Even though it's got the tensile strength to allow several miles to be dangling while they're laying the cable, a sudden yank like that can't be good for it. This of course only matters if the cable actually crosses the part of the fault line that was in motion. I have no idea if any cables were in that exact area....
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