After the tsunami devastation in Southeast Asia, Oregon State is helping the world find out how to prevent such disasters in the future

By Sara Zaske

On Dec. 26, 2004, Becky Johnson, daughter of Ernie Johnson, ’61, was preparing to enjoy a day on the beach in Phuket, Thailand, when water suddenly flooded the elevator she was riding. Fortunately, the doors opened. Not knowing where to go, Johnson swam outside through the chaos and debris. To get above water, she climbed onto a child’s jungle gym where she clung as wave after wave threatened to tear her from her perch and from her life.

Weeks later and half way around the world, a group of middle school students watched as a meter-high wave crashed among small blue buildings, carrying toy cars and bricks “out to sea.” In comparison to the real world tsunami disaster, the demonstration appeared calm, even quaint, but what happens at Oregon State’s tsunami wave basin is anything but child’s play.

From sophisticated experiments to public outreach, the miniature waves generated at OSU are aimed at preventing the kind of devastation Johnson witnessed first hand.

“ We hope our research will contribute to saving people’s lives,” said Solomon Yim, OSU civil engineer and a principal investigator behind the tsunami wave basin. “It can lead to real applications, translating into design codes, stronger more tsunami-resistant buildings, escape routes and education of the general public.”

In December, a massive, 9.3 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra caused tsunamis that scoured coastlines ringing the Indian Ocean in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and even eastern Africa. Without any warning systems and with little knowledge of tsunamis, many people did not know how to react when the ocean suddenly retreated, sucked up by an advancing tsunami. Then as the waves bore down, buildings gave way, bridges cracked, and lifelines were cut. Becky Johnson survived with only minor injuries. She was lucky. As of this printing, more than 300,000 people are either missing or dead.

In the wake of such devastation, people all over the world wanted to know how a future disaster could be prevented, and for answers, the media turned to Oregon State.

In a week that is normally quiet in Corvallis, cameras and reporters descended on Oregon State’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. CNN, NBC, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and international crews from Brazil, Japan, and Germany were among the many that sought out OSU’s expertise.

It was what geology emeritus professor Robert Yeats called a “teachable moment,” and when it comes to large-scale hazards, OSU has some of the best teachers in the world. For many years, Oregon State has been quietly developing top programs in geology, oceanography and engineering. Then, of course, there is the world’s largest, most technologically connected tsunami wave basin just across campus.

“OSU has been kind of under the radar in a lot of ways,” said marine geologist Chris Goldfinger, ’91, ’94. “We’ve been slowly building up these specialties and doing things not many other people are doing — or are good at. We have been doing what we normally do, but now that the Sumatra earthquake has happened, there’s been a lot of attention on us.”

The rapid reconnaissance effort

A week after Christmas, OSU ocean engineer Harry Yeh was doing what he normally does after a tsunami event: surveying impacted coastline with a team of international researchers he helped assemble.

“Harry Yeh is a very prominent member of the tsunami research community, and we looked early on for him to be involved in this effort,” said Susan Tubessing, executive director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. A nonprofit academic and professional organization, the Institute sent several “rapid reconnaissance” teams to affected countries shortly after the tsunamis to collect perishable scientific data.

With more than 20 years experience in the field, Yeh has surveyed tsunami sites in Nicaragua, Peru, Japan and Russia. The recent disaster bore many similarities to previous events, but the sheer size of the devastation struck even one of the most seasoned tsunami scientists.

“It is hard to evaluate such tragedy,” said Yeh. “You simply cannot measure such effects by any scale.”

Harry Yeh, civil engineering professor and tsunami expert, demonstrates models set up at the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory to test impacts of tsunami waves.

Leading the reconnaissance team in India, Yeh collected what data he could measure as quickly as possible, knowing that the information might help save lives in the future. Yeh’s team covered 350 kilometers (217 miles) of coastline in five days, interviewing survivors and measuring tsunami wave height and run-up — how far the waves came ashore — from the clues the waves left behind. A week later, a second team, which included OSU engineer Yim, followed to maximize the ground covered.

Tsunami research is inherently a collaborative science, and the scientific effort after the Sumatran earthquake involves researchers from multiple disciplines, countries and institutions. Yeh is particularly proud his diverse team, which included United States, Indian and Japanese researchers with specialties including sedimentology, hydrodynamics, seismology and social engineering. Since his return from India, Yeh is also sharing data and ideas with other leading international researchers who covered shorelines in Sumatra, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

The information gathered on-site will help scientists refine computer models that predict how far tsunami waves can advance inland. To prepare for future events, researchers want to learn as much as possible about the recent Sumatran earthquake, which is a challenge since the fault lies underneath the ocean.

“From the effects, we can infer the fault conditions,” said Yeh. “Nobody knows what really happens when the fault is ruptured and what kind of distribution there is of the sea floor displacements, especially for a very large earthquake like this one.”

In India, Yeh took measurements that indicated wave heights ranging from 3 meters to 5 meters (about 10 feet to 16 feet). Even at the northern most end of his survey near Madras, the waves did not appear to be lessening in strength. Yeh has access to extensive satellite imagery, and his colleagues in India are still working on much of the uncharted coastline. Still, the OSU ocean engineer worries about all the area that was not covered.

“We really need to have complete data to grasp what happened,” he said.

While on-site information is valuable, it has limitations. The evidence is ephemeral. Weather and cleanup efforts can obscure clues such as mud-lines and debris. Travel and simple human exhaustion also hinder data collection, and then, the information itself is not always specific enough to make good inferences for future events.

Solomon Yim, OSU civil engineer and a principal investigator at the wave laboratory, shows the scale of the wave tank basin.

“A tsunami of this magnitude is a once in a hundred-year type of event. This is exactly what we want to predict using computer simulation — the extreme events. That’s why we rush to get data,” said Yim. “However, because the measurements are estimates at best, we would like to have more details, and to get more details it’s much easier to be in a controlled environment.”

OSU’s tsunami wave basin

Oregon State has the largest, controlled environment for such experiments available in the world.

The size of an Olympic swimming pool, OSU’s tsunami wave basin can create miniature, solitary tsunami waves or “solitons” on a 40-to-1 scale. While size is a limiting factor, researchers can set up repeatable experiments including mockups of shoreline, buildings and bridges to test structural designs and the applicability of computer tsunami models.

Scientists from all over the world come to Corvallis to conduct research, and thanks to software and databases developed at OSU, even more people can access the basin remotely using the World Wide Web to observe experiments in progress or view past experiments.

“You can replay the action and even back up to see key moments in slow motion — the same kinds of things you can see in TV football games, but aren’t usually able to do in engineering research,” said computer scientist Cherri Pancake, who led information technology development at the basin.

OSU’s tsunami wave basin.

College of Engineering computer scientist Cherri Pancake led information technology development at the wave basin.

This level of accessibility is what attracted the project’s primary funder, the National Science Foundation, to choose Oregon State.

In 2000, the NSF, the agency responsible for a large portion of federal scientific spending, launched an $82 million dollar effort entitled the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. For this project, the NSF allocated $52 million to construct 15 laboratory facilities that simulate earthquake behavior, such as shake tables and geotechnical centrifuges. The remaining $30 million went toward connecting technology. The idea was to create a few large facilities at select universities, which could be shared by the entire research community. The institutions chosen through a competitive process were among the top universities in the country, including Cornell University, University of California at Berkeley and UCLA.

OSU won the grant for the only “wet” facility, the tsunami wave basin. The award included construction funding of $4.8 million and approximately $1 million in annual funding for 10 years.

The NSF described OSU’s proposal as the “ideal basin.” Oregon State had the experience, having operated a wave research facility for three decades. With partial private funding from quarry owner, O.H. Hinsdale, OSU’s wave lab started in 1972 with a single “flume” — a long, narrow, water-filled channel for studying wind-generated waves. In 1986, the Office of Naval Research expanded the capabilities of the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory by adding a spiral basin and a rectangular wave basin, the precursor to the current tsunami facility.

But what really clinched the NSF grant was OSU’s collaborative culture. Oregon State’s proposal outlined not only construction of a unique basin but also the development of advanced software and interfaces that would create unprecedented, instant access for scientific research.

Pancake recalled that one prominent researcher was a particularly vocal critic of OSU as a tsunami facility site, but he changed his mind when he saw level of collaboration envisioned.

“He didn’t think any other institution would be as inclusive as we have been,” Pancake said. “I thought that was a very high tribute to the Oregon State culture. It’s something we can all be very proud of.”

Dan Cox, director of the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory in Corvallis.

Tsunami hazard zone and evacuation route signs developed by OSU in 1994 have been adopted by the five Pacific states.

A typical month at the wave lab shows the wide range of people who benefit from OSU’s work. In addition to the scientific community, the laboratory is also used by businesses, which pay to run tests on designed structures such as breakwaters and other erosion controls. Some of the lab’s most important “clients,” however, are students — from graduate research assistants to elementary school classes. The facility is also available to the general public, and the lab is holding its next open house on April 29 and 30 during OSU’s Moms’ Weekend.

“This is truly a multi-use facility not just in terms of research and testing but also in education,” said Dan Cox, the wave lab’s director.

On the wave watch in the Pacific Northwest

On the Pacific coast, in particular, tsunami education may be more importan t than even the mos t advanced technological warning system. If a massive earthquake hit, coastal communities should not wait for a warning to be issued, according to Robert Yeats. As soon as the shaking stops, they should move to higher ground. Tsunami waves could arrive 15 minutes later.

In the wake of the Indian Ocean disaster, everyone is very aware of tsunamis, but that awareness is fleeting when compared to the time between events — even for someone like Yeats, who literally wrote the book on earthquake dangers in the Pacific Northwest.

“After I wrote the book, I realized there was sort of an unreality to it (a Pacific coast tsunami), like it was something that couldn’t happen,” he said. “After all, it hadn’t happened in 40 years, but when this tsunami happened, it was sort of a reality check.”

The last tsunami to hit Oregon was in 1964, when an earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska sent waves barreling down the coast, causing damage as far away as Crescent City, Calif. Perhaps the biggest danger to the Pacific Northwest, however, is the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a long fault line that runs underneath and just off the coast. The Cascadia extends about 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) from Vancouver Island, B.C. to Cape Mendocino, Calif., and bears many similarities to the Sumatran fault.

Both faults are subduction zones where one tectonic plate is forced underneath another. This type of fault holds enormous tension. During the Indian Ocean disaster, the 9.3 earthquake created sudden upward ruptures along the entire length of the Sumatran fault, which in turn displaced a massive amount of water, generating tsunamis in all directions, some moving at speeds as fast as a jet airplane.

By taking cores from ocean sediments, OSU’s Goldfinger has helped chart 10,000 years of earthquakes on the Cascadia. It is one of the longest temporal records of a fault line in the world, and what it reveals is less than comforting.

The marine geologist and his colleagues have identified what appears to be a “cluster-gap” pattern on the Cascadia. During clusters, two to five huge earthquakes occur within 300 to 400 years of each other, followed by relatively quiet periods in which there are often much smaller earthquakes. These gaps range from 700 to 1,200 years.

The most recent major earthquake shook the Cascadia in the year 1700. Before then, evidence indicates there were three other earthquakes, but the nearest predecessor, which occurred around the year 1500, appears to have been a smaller earthquake than the rest. The 1700 event, then, could be the beginning, instead of the end, of a new cluster.

“The only question is do we have another event in a cluster?” said Goldfinger. “If it is finished, it would be another 1,000 years before the next big one. But if it is not finished, the average time between events is about 300 to 400 years, and it’s been 300 years.”

Because of recent events, there has been a great deal of attention to mitigating the threat of such a tsunami-generating earthquake. In February, director Cox testified before a congressional committee about the capabilities at OSU’s wave lab, and in the coming months and years, the work of OSU scientists at the tsunami wave basin will help better define the danger along the Pacific coast, developing tsunami-resistant building designs and escape routes.

Whether a wave hits in the near, or far distant future, the wave lab director stresses that it is never too early to prepare. “Fifty percent of the population lives within 50 miles of the coast, and that number is increasing. The Oregon coast is much less developed now, but what will it look like in 50 years?” Cox said. “Maybe it won’t happen in your generation, maybe it won’t be you, but what about the next generation?” OSU

Sarah Zaske is a staff writer for the OSU Foundation .

Roza’s Story   Mahdi Abrar and his wife, the late Roza Sadjad Rhiza Sadjad gave the Oregon Stater permission to print an excerpt from an e-mail that he sent to the Alumni Association on Jan. 1. We offer our sincere condolences to Roza’s family. I would like to share with you a couple of lines about my youngest sister Roza Sjamsoe’oed Sadjad. She met her husband, Mahdi Abrar, when they both were taking their master’s degrees at OSU (1991). My sister also received her doctorate there in 1994. Her husband, a veterinarian, completed his doctorate in Bogor. They both took teaching positions at Syiah Kuala University in the city of Banda Aceh, where all Mahdi’s close relatives resided. A couple of days before Christmas, Roza and Mahdi went to Jakarta for a research seminar. They left their three children (their 10 year-old son, Luthfi, and his little sisters, Maureen and Tazkia) with Mahdi’s sister in Banda Aceh. After the seminar, they spent a couple of days with my dad in Bogor. When we called them on Christmas Eve, my brother, my two sisters and their families were having dinner together with my dad. They were very happy. On Christmas Day, Roza and Mahdi took the plane to Banda Aceh via Medan. Mahdi stayed overnight in Medan because he had something to do there on Monday. He planned to go home on Tuesday. Roza went right away to Banda Aceh. The children missed their mom very much because it was the first time she had left them for rather a long time. Well, we are not sure what happened next, but most probably Roza spent the whole day and night with her children, opening gifts she brought home from Bogor. When they got up in the morning, their house was suddenly shaken by the earthquake. People were running and screaming because the tidal wave was after them. In panic, Roza took her children into their car to try to protect them from the water. But the water came too fast and too strong. Luthfi did not even make it into the car. The door probably was slammed by the water, and Luthfi was thrown and swept away … miraculously, amazingly, unbelievably ... God Almighty has saved him through someone’s hand, and he survived the disaster. A couple of days later we heard that they found my sister’s dead body still in the car with her children. Mahdi’s extended families who lived in the neighborhood, including his parent, his brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins ... all died. When they collected all the bodies, only two family members were missing. Mahdi, who was in Medan when it happened, and his son, Luthfi. I believe that my sister, Roza, had done all her main duties as an academician, a daughter, a wife and a mother in the last days of her life. She presented her research paper to fulfill her academic duty, then she visited her father and made him happy. She went to her mother’s grave, then went home to spend the night with her children. And at the last moment of her life, she was trying hard to save the lives of her two little daughters. She also miraculously “sent” her son to her husband, so that the generation did not stop there. May all their souls rest in peace, and may God Almighty accept their deeds and forgive their sins. Life goes on, right or wrong, losing and gaining, so let’s just start another New Year. —Rhiza Sadjad