Paradise bay likely made Indonesia tsunami more dangerous

By Margie Mason

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Experts said the long, narrow bay running into Palu, a city of 380,000, squeezed the tsunami into a tight space, likely making the waves more dangerous. Officials said more than 380 were dead in Palu alone, and more were unaccounted for.

“Because of the bay, all the water comes there and collects together. And then it makes it higher,” said Nazli Ismail, a geophysicist at the University of Syiah Kuala in Banda Aceh on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, where a magnitude 9.1 earthquake spawned a tsunami in 2004, killing 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the waves reached as high as 6 meters (20 feet) in at least one area, according to a report relayed by a man who called to say he survived only by climbing and clinging to a tree. The cities of Donggala and Mamuju were also hit, but they had not yet been reached. Roads were impassable, cut off by debris and landslides, and communications were nearly impossible.

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