Crescent City Tsunami 3-11-2011

Crescent City is so pretty, last time I was up there It was 1983, I was 4, and the entire beach was covered with massive logs from a bad El Niño. Still remember it 40 years later.

Going to the beach in a town with a history of devastating tsunamis during a tsunami warning seems like a great idea.

Oh how I remember that day so clearly, being woke up at 4:15am being told to evacuate my 5th street home. I was looking at other wave videos when this one was added to my suggested videos list.

If you were in Japan for this show, you could easily have been swept away. There are places where the waves were 120 feet high. That would be enough to send water fairly close to the high school.

nice capture of the tidal surge there... thx for posting!

Good documentation of the effects of this event on the California coast.

Sometimes you see the beauty and sometimes you experience the heartache.

This reminds me that people had permitted themselves to be deceived by the recession of the water ahead of a tsunami. In Lisbon, Portugal a severe earthquake struck in 1755 and then the water receded from the harbour and people went to look at all the things that suddenly became visible. And then the tsunami came and they drowned.

Hard to believe that an earthquake from one side of the planet can have an effect a 1/4 of the world. Go look up NOAA's animation showing the tsunamis spread over the ocean. Its stunning.

To keep this in Perspective….while we are enjoying the beauty & power of the ocean, the Japanese are having farmlands ruined, villages wiped out,homes swept away, & the deaths of thousands. This is devastating to local fishing industries as well. Their loved ones can never be forgotten!

It just shows the raw power of mother nature, even though this happened in Japan it took a bit for the waves to hit here in California, and also this being 12 years ago it's still impressive to watch!

Great video.. best I’ve seen.

Looks like a 2meter wave generated 4000 miles away. Pretty awesome.

Where’s the water line normally at?

No matter how small the waves are, watching the ocean recede always gives me the creeps.

This is the wave when it's fresh and new. I assume that the debris from this same wave, from Japan, has already come to this same shoreline, many months later. But now, the stuff that will was ashore is damaged and worn from its trip across the Pacific.

How did you all survive?

The fact that an earthquake that was centered almost 4000 miles away could create even a small tsunami in Crescent City should be enough to give any thinking human being pause for thought. That little mini-tsunami caused MILLIONS of dollars of damage all along the west coast of the USA and Canada and even down south into Mexico, mostly to moored boats and marinas. If that much damage can occur HOURS after the trigger event, 4000 miles away, just take a moment to consider the power of the tsunami had when it hit Japan. I've seen video of an airport in Japan that was about 50 miles away from the epicenter of the earthquake, taken during the earthquake itself, from inside the airport terminal, looking out across the tarmac at the planes and sea beyond, and the tsunami arrived IMMEDIATELY, the shaking of the earthquake had not yet stopped. And no, it wasn't aftershocks, the airport was still experiencing the main seismic event, parts of the building falling apart, when the tsunami arrived, sweeping aside planes and flooding the airport buildings.

3.5 hours to cross the entire Pacific Ocean!

The wave hit heights of over 6 inches.