Post-event field survey of 28 September 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami

Abstract

Abstract. An earthquake with a magnitude of Mw=7.5 that occurred in Sulawesi, Indonesia, on 28 September 2018 triggered liquefaction and tsunamis that caused severe damage and many casualties. This paper reports the results of a post-tsunami field survey conducted by a team with members from Indonesia and Taiwan that began 13 d after the earthquake. The main purpose of this survey was to measure the run-up of tsunami waves and inundation and observe the damage caused by the tsunami. Measurements were made in 18 selected sites, most in Palu Bay. The survey results show that the run-up height and inundation distance reached 10.7 m in Tondo and 488 m in Layana. Inundation depths of 2 to 4 m were common at most sites and the highest was 8.4 m in Taipa. The arrival times of the tsunami waves were quite short and different for each site, typically about 3–8 min from the time of the main earthquake event. This study also describes the damage to buildings and infrastructure and coastal landslides.

Submarine landslide source models consistent with multiple tsunami records of the 2018 Palu tsunami, Sulawesi, Indonesia

“…Run-up heights (Omira et al 2019;Widiyanto et al 2019) and flow depths (Pribadi et al 2018;Muhari et al 2018) were observed during field surveys (Fig. 1a).…”

“…It is difficult to know whether the flow depth data includes splash heights. Therefore, we compared our calculated run-up heights with run-up heights (Omira et al 2019;Widiyanto et al 2019) alone. We used run-up heights including the tidal elevation at the time of the earthquake from the reports.…”

“…Field surveys of the impacted areas that began several days after the earthquake revealed that the tsunami locally reached heights of 10 m above sea level around Palu Bay (Muhari et al 2018;Pribadi et al 2018). Field surveys of coastal areas around Palu Bay (Omira et al 2019;Widiyanto et al 2019) revealed the overall picture of the tsunami height distribution in the bay. Figure 1a shows coastal tsunami flow depths and run-up heights reported by those surveys.…”

Run-up, inundation, and sediment characteristics of the 22 December 2018 Sunda Strait tsunami, Indonesia

“…It is famous for the 1883 Krakatau eruption, which caused a 30 m tsunami that led to 36 000 fatalities and affected Earth's climate and weather for several weeks, as reported by Verbeek (1884). The 1883 eruption of Krakatau and the resulting tsunami have been widely discussed (e.g., Yokoyama, 1987;Camus et al, 1992;Maeno and Imamura, 2011;Paris et al, 2014). A young volcano called Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) appeared above sea level in 1929.…”

The Risk of Tsunamis in Mexico

“…Also, tsunamis may be regarded as low frequency events but with high impacts in terms of human/infrastructure/economic losses. Their power of destruction has been more than evident in recent years [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. It is believed that from the time period between 1998 and 2017, the losses inflicted by tsunami disasters were a total of US$280 billion and 251,770 causalities, in damages [7].…”