The April 2007 Solomon Islands Earthquake, Tsunami, and Land Level Changes

Tsunami education and response are critical life-saving aspects for near-source tsunamis; there is little time for buoys to detect the generation of a tsunami and interpret the signal and/or for communities to issue evacuation messages. The 1 April 2007 magnitude Ms 8.1 earthquake off the New Georgia Group in the Solomon Islands generated a tsunami that killed 52. A reconnaissance team deployed within one week investigated 65 coastal settlements on 13 remote Islands, interviewed survivors and made surveys of both the tectonic response and the inundation, finding tectonic uplift up to 3.6 m, subsidence down to — 1.5m, locally focused run-up heights of 12 m, local flow depths of 5 m. Such an event would be expected to have caused a large loss of life, and did in fact cause extensive damage to low-lying buildings. However, the ancestral heritage "run to high ground after an earthquake" passed on to younger generations by survivors of smaller historic tsunamis triggered an immediate spontaneous self evacuation that likely spared many lives.