6.2.4: Tsunami Sounds
- Page ID
- 6046
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Overview
Most observers of a great tsunami are so horrified that they remember only what they saw rather than what they heard. However, Jerry Eaton, a seismologist with the USGS, was at a bridge across the Wailuku River in Hilo, Hawaii, on the night of May 22, 1960, as a tsunami from a monster earthquake in Chile approached the city. Eaton heard “an ominous noise, a faint rumble like a distant train, that came from the darkness far out in Hilo Bay. Two minutes later, … the noise became deafening.” Carol Brown, sixteen, heard “a low rumbling noise that soon became louder and was accompanied by sounds of crashing and crunching.”