Tsunami Warning Generated Expectation Among Foreigners And Vallarta Residents

 After the explosion of a submarine volcano Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai, which occurred near the island of Tonga, in Oceania, there were several variations in the swell in the Mexican Pacific coasts, such as Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Colima and even Baja California, and it was even reported that the sea moved away several meters in some parts of the coast of Nayarit. According to the Tsunami Warning Center of the Secretary of the Navy, on Saturday afternoon the sea level rose half a meter higher than normal on the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, for which elements of Civil Protection and Firefighters of the State informed that a monitoring of the behavior of the beaches of the municipality would be maintained. As soon as the phenomenon was known, the Secretary of the Navy issued an alert defining the possibility of a rise of the tide in the coasts of the Mexican western Pacific, although the precision indicated low risk and more focused on the coasts of Hawaii and the United States. On the beaches of Puerto Vallarta some bathers found out and left voluntarily but the great majority remained on the beaches. Only in Guayabitos, Punta Mita, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and some other beaches of Nayarit the phenomenon of the sea receding a few meters was registered, which caused surprise and uncertainty among locals and bathers.

According to the engineer Leonel Salinas, general director of Quake Alarm Mexico, the danger of the eruption generating a tsunami is only for the area close to where it occurred, therefore the Mexican Pacific coasts, including Puerto Vallarta, were out of danger, but there was preventive monitoring anyway. For the rest of the Pacific Ocean, especially the coasts of our country, he detailed, it only resulted in the retraction of the water level, which was normal and expected and did not cause any damage or invasion of coastal areas, as did occur in the areas near the eruption, where the waves reached about 1.5 meters in height. "Due to its relatively low magnitude, tsunami generation is only confined to about 300 kilometers around the event. For tsunamis like those in Japan or Indonesia in previous years, large events of more than 8 degrees magnitude are required, in addition to the event being a vertical deformation of the seafloor, the sliding of large land masses into the ocean, volcanic eruptions and large meteorites. The calculated local magnitude of the event was 5.8 degrees", explained the engineer. So far there is no risk that the levels of the beaches of the Mexican Pacific could rise further. In fact, as reported this morning by the Tsunami Warning Center, although according to the monitoring of the sea level in the record of the tide stations, a current effect persists in the interior of each of the ports of the Mexican Pacific, this will decrease in the next hours.