Santa Monica felt the negligible secondary effects of the 8.8 magnitude Chilean earthquake Saturday as a 2.3-foot tsunami hit the shore around 12 p.m., causing little to no damage or inconvenience.
“All we saw was an increase in the tide,” said officer Erika Klufi of the Santa Monica Police Department. “Other than that there was no issue.”
Santa Monica officials and Los Angeles County Lifeguards were quick to respond Saturday morning after the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center sent out a caution that the recent earthquake in Chile might send tsunami waves throughout the West oast, hitting places such as Hawaii, Santa Barbara and Santa Monica.
Although the threat of the estimated 3.3-foot tsunami was small, lifeguards and Santa Monica police quickly sent warnings to beachgoers, advising them to stay off the beach, said Steve Zermeno, an inspector with the L.A. County Fire Department, which houses the L.A. County Lifeguards.
Unlike in Hawaii, where waves were feared to be as great as 8 feet, no evacuations were ordered for residents and beachgoers in Santa Monica. But both locations experienced the same underwhelming effects once the tsunami actually hit. Hawaii has had no reports of damage from the tsunami, which produced waves only up to 6.5 feet high, and Santa Monica saw the same lack of damage.
A tsunami is considered a sea wave caused by an earthquake or a volcanic eruption.
The origin of these recent tsunamis was the Chilean earthquake, which has been the second major earthquake of 2010 and has created a death count of over 700 people with an estimated 500,000 residential Chilean buildings severely damaged.