L.A.-Area Tsunami Could Cause Massive Damage - Study
Date: 04-Apr-05
Country: USA
The report, the first to estimate losses from tsunamis rather than earthquakes in Southern California, studied tsunamis caused by underwater landslides in unstable sediments off the Palos Verdes peninsula.
The biggest waves would arrive just one minute after the slide. Under the worst case scenario, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles could be closed for one year, forcing $83 billion in exports to be shipped from elsewhere.
The most likely trigger for the landslide would be a large earthquake which itself would cause billions of dollars in damage, the study said.
"It is important to remember that these tsunami costs would be incurred in addition to earthquake costs," the authors wrote in the study published in the April edition of Civil Engineering magazine.
The study did not model fatalities, partly to avoid contentious assumptions about the economic value of life.
James Moore, one of the authors, noted that a 1998 tsunami in Papua New Guinea was generated by a similar mechanism and cost more than 2,000 lives.
"The toll here could be much higher," he said.
Moore is a professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Civil Engineering and Public Policy and Management at USC's Viterbi School of Engineering.