Tsunami: Killer from Inner Space. (OCEAN MATTERS).(Brief Article)

It happened suddenly on a quiet morning early in September 1992. Some 75 miles off the Pacific coast of Nicaragua in Central America, an earthquake shook the ocean floor. The vast energy released by the quake was transmitted as shock waves into the surrounding waters. On the ocean's surface, the transmitted energy piled up huge waves as high as 65 feet! One after another, the waves moved toward shore, crashing over everything.

Along a 200-mile stretch of the Nicaraguan coast, the giant waves destroyed almost everything in their path. Their incredibly strong undertows swept homes, hotels, trees, animals, and people out to sea. The known dead totaled 116. Thousands were left homeless. All this destruction was caused by an unfelt earthquake in inner space, the land beneath the sea, on that fateful day.

Giant waves like those that crashed into the Nicaraguan coast are called tsunamis by scientists. That is word coined by the Japanese, who have suffered through many tsunamis throughout their history as have many other peoples living along the rim of the Pacific Ocean. (Tsunamis are often called tidal waves, but that is a misleading name for them. They are not caused by the tidal action of the oceans.)

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