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| In late September of 1999, the following
news article was forwarded to the Tsunami Bulletin Board (TBB):
Note: the message is copied here exactly as it came to the TBB. Papeete is not in New Caledonia and the time of the wave was found to be about a half hour earlier. |
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TWO TIDAL WAVES DESTROY SCHOOL BUILDINGS IN MARQUESAS PAPE'ETE, New Caledonia (September 15th, 1999) -- Eighty five school children had a lucky escape Tuesday when two successive five-meter (16.5 feet.) tidal waves struck their school on Fatu Hiva Island in the Marquesas group, RFO-radio reports. The waves, which struck early in the afternoon (1:45 PM local time) destroyed an iron reinforced concrete wall barrier. Teachers worked desperately to get their pupils out of the classroom windows, after the first wave smashed into the school ground buildings. "All the window glasses were broken straightaway and classrooms were flooded. Some kids couldn't be rushed out immediately so they had to stay in the flooded classrooms and hang on to floating objects, anything", town official Henri Tuianolli said. |
"There was one building nearby, where our ice machine and refrigerators were located, it was 70% destroyed" "Another building which we use to store our canoes and fishing equipment was completely destroyed" Miraculously, no one was injured.
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| This event was particularily interesting since there were no reports of earthquakes anywhere in the area during the appropriate time frame to generate such waves. A group comprised of four members of the International Tsunami Survey Team (ITST) was assembled to investigate the origin of these waves. |