Not to belittle the human tragedy of the event, but that's an amazing and unique set of survival stories.
Surviving the tsunami by surfing it
Now, if you search on this, you'll find a bunch of people comparing this to the surfing scene in Lucifer's Hammer -- which is a scene that stuck in a lot of people's minds and might be the most famous scene in the book. The book Lucifer's Hammer, by the partnership of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, described a cometary impact on Earth -- and long before Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter, they wrote about the comet impacting in chunks. One of the chunks hits the Pacific Ocean off of Los Angeles: and a few surfer dudes ride out inland.
Now, I knew, I just knew, I could find the scene online. I did. So it's below, in small text. If you really want to read it, you can copy it into an editor and blow it up. It's from an alt.surfing post in 1994. If you know what "alt.surfing" stands for, you're an old-timer like me.
Gil rested face-down on the board, thinking slow thoughts, waiting
for the one big wave. Water sloshed under his belly. Hot sunlight broiled
his back. Other surfboards bobbed in a line on either side of him.
Jeanine caught his eye and smiled a lazy smile full of promises
and memories. Her husband would be out of town for three more days.
Gil's answering grin said nothing. He was waiting for a wave. There
wouldn't be very good waves here at Santa Monica's Muscle Beach, but
Jeanine's apartment was near and there'd be other waves on other days.
The houses and apartments on the bluff above bobbed up and down.
They looked bright and new, not like the houses on Malibu Beach there the
buildings always looked older than they were. Yet even here there were
signs of age. Entropy ran fast at the line between the sea and land. Gil
was young, like all the young men bobbing on the water this fine morning.
He was seventeen, burned brown, his longish hair bleached nearly white,
belly muscles like the discrete plates of an armadillo. He was glad to
look older than he was. He hadn't needed to pay for a place to stay or
food to eat since his father threw him out of the house. There were
always older women.
If he thought about Jeanine's husband, it was with friendly
amusement. He was no threat to the man. He wanted nothing permanent.
She could be making out with some guy who'd want her money on a permanent
basis. . . .
He squinted against the brilliance. It flared and he closed his
eyes. That was reflex; wave reflections were a common thing out here.
The flare died against his closed eyelids, and he looked out to sea. Wave
coming?
He saw a fiery cloud lift beyond the horizon. He studied it,
squinting, making himself believe. . .
"Big wave coming," he called, and rose to his knees.
Corey called, "Where?"
"You'll see it," Gil called confidently. He turned his board and
paddled out to sea, bending almost until his cheek touched the board,
using long, deep sweeps of his long arms. He was scared shitless, but
nobody would ever know it.
"Wait for me!" Jeanine called.
Gil continued paddling. Others followed, but only the strongest
could keep keep up. Corey pulled abreast of him.
"I saw the fireball!" he shouted. He panted with effort. "It's
Lucifer's Hammer! Tidal wave!"
Gil said nothing. Talk was discouraged out here, but the others
jabbered among themselves, and Gil paddled even faster, leaving them. A
man ought to be alone during a thing like this. He was beginning to grasp
the fact of death.
Rain came, and he paddled on. He glanced back to see the houses
and bluff receding, going uphill, leaving an enormous stretch of new
beach, gleaming wet. Lightning flared along the hills above Malibu.
The hills had changed. The orderly buildings of Santa Monica had
tumbled into heaps.
The horizon went up.
Death. Inevitable. If death was inevitable, what was left?
Style, only style. Gil went on paddling, riding the receding waters until
motion was gone. He was a long way out now. He turned his board, and
waited.
Others caught up and turned, spread across hundreds of yards in
the rainy waters. If they spoke, Gil couldn't hear them. There was a
terrifying rumble behind them. Gil waited a moment longer, then paddled
like mad, sure deep strokes, doing it well and truly.
He was sliding downhill, down the big green wall, and the water
was lifting hard beneath him, so that he rested on knees and elbows with
the blood pouring into his face, bugging his eyes, starting a nosebleed.
The pressure was enormous, unbearable, then it eased. With the speed he'd
gained he turned the board, scooting down and sideways along the nearly
vertical wall, balancing on knees . . .
He stood up. He needed more angle, more. If he could live
through this! Ride it out, ride it out, and do it well. . . .
Other boards had turned too. He saw them ahead of him, above and
below on the green wall. Corey had turned the wrong way. He shot beneath
Gil's feet, moving faster than hell and looking terrified.
They swept toward the bluff. They were higher than the bluff.
The beach houses and the Santa Monica pier with it's carousel and all the
yachts anchored nearby slid beneath the waters. Then they were looking
down on the streets and cars. Gil had a momentary glimpse of a bearded
man kneeling with others; then the waters swept on past. The base of the
wall was churning chaos, white foam and swirling debris and thrashing
bodies and tumbling cars.
Below him now was Santa Monica Boulevard. The wave swept over the
Mall, adding the wreckage of shops and shoppers and potted trees and
bicycles to the crashing foam below. As the wave engulfed each low
building he braced himself for the shock, squatting low. The board
slammed against his feet, and he nearly lost it; he saw Tommy Schumacher
engulfed, gone, his board bounding high and whirling crazily. Only two
boards left now.
The wave's frothing peak was far, far above him; the churning base
was much too close. His legs shrieked in the agony of exhaustion. One
board left ahead of him, ahead and below. Who? It didn't matter; he saw
it dip into chaos, gone. Gil risked a quick look back: nobody there. He
was alone on the ultimate wave.
Oh, God, if he lived to tell this tale, what a movie it would
make! Bigger than The Endless Summer, bigger than The Towering Inferno: a
surfing movie with ten million in special effects! If only his legs would
hold! He already had a world record, he must be at least a mile inland,
no one had ever ridden a wave for a mile! but the frothing purling peak
was miles overhead and the Barrington Apartments, thirty stories tall, was
coming at him like a flyswatter.
Here's an image of what a BIG tsunami like this might look like about to crush Honolulu.
And here's what riding a big impact tsunami might feel like:
No comments:
Post a Comment