Grave wave warnings

Stories about our impending demise may – it turns out -- not be greatly exaggerated, but they aren’t necessarily new either.

Today’s Times considers the risk that a tsunami could obliterate chunks of the eastern seaboard:

A Warning About East Coast Tsunamis

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

The risk is low. But the consequences could be high, with deadly waves striking the coastal communities of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey and killing thousands of people.

Today, the federal government is announcing that it has completed the mid-Atlantic region’s risk assessments for the killer mounds of water known as tsunamis, or tidal waves.

In an extremely long-winded article on March 13, 1878 under the headline, “THE COMING TIDAL WAVE," similar dire warnings were aired and dismissed:

A superstition exists among the people here that a tidal wave will inundate the coast and extend into the interior of the country.

Eleven years later those “superstitions" turned out to be warranted, at least according to this tsunami of melodrama.

September 9, 1889
WASHED BY A TIDAL WAVE
A STARTLING VISITATION AT SEASIDE RESORTS
Beaches submerged and strollers drenched and carried into the surd—Panic at Atlantic City

Yesterday was not a particularly inviting day for a trip to the seashore, but the weather has got to behave far worse than it did to prevent a crowd from gathering on the strand at Rockaway Beach of a Sunday afternoon in early September, The crowd from the cities clustered about New York Bay was not comparatively large yesterday, but those who composed it – some three thousand in number – were treated to an experience with the Atlantic Ocean they will not soon forget.

Thick weather has been prevailing out at sea for three or four days, the ragged edges of the storm making occasional appearances in rain-threatening clouds over this and neighboring cities. Yesterday the sea, which had been rolling high, began to increase, rolling in huge billow shoreward and breaking in thundering roars on the beach. The wonderful power and majesty of the ocean in such commotion was the most attractive feature of the resorts strung along the beach, and there were large crowds watching the sea at what they supposed was a safe distance, when, at 4:30 o’clock, a tidal wave rolled upon the beach seventy feet beyond the previous high-water mark.

It broke over at least two thousand men, women, and children who were sitting, walking, or standing on the strand. It came unperceived by the great majority, and although there was a general scramble to get beyond its reach, but few were successful in wholly escaping its grasp. The great majority of the crowd suffered a thorough drenching. Many are tumbled over in the rush of waters and several women and children were caught by the undertow and carried back toward the surf line. Their screams of terror were heard shrill above the roar of the waters, and for an instant it seemed as if some must have been swept away and drowned, but strong arms reached for them and all were rescued with no more serious injuries than the shock, the fright, and the drenching.

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