Talk:2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami

Move article

This article should be moved to 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami, aimply due to the fact that it does have a major tsunami. Juxlos (talk) 17:54, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I disagree, we don't event know yet what the separate impacts are of the earthquake and the tsunami. This was not a large tsunami - 2m maximum, so let's leave where it is for now. Mikenorton (talk) 18:30, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I totally agree with @Juxlos. Officials confirmed that around 5m tsunami had been generated by the earthquake. Anyhow, just because it was a 2m tsunami doesn't mean that it didn't cause massive destruction. I have seen the reports and many residential areas had been destroyed by the tsunami as well.PaPa PaPaRoony (talk) 05:47, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

While at it, 2018 Central Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami is probably a better idea, since "Sulawesi" seems a bit broad considering it gets earthquakes often. Juxlos (talk) 07:42, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Sulawesi was previously hit by notable earthquakes in 2008, 2000 & 1996, so no reason to be more specific in my view. Mikenorton (talk) 17:14, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Inaccurate timeline

Article says that main earthquake struck at 18:02 local time, but tsunami waves were detected at 17:27, and cancelled at 17:37 local time, and that the tsunami struck around that time. This is clearly inaccurate but I have not been able to find a citable timeline of what happened when. lenny (talk) 21:30, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

You are not considering the "sequence of foreshocks" which the article says began around 15:00 and included an M_w 6.1 event.--John Cline (talk) 22:03, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

You're right, the main shock was at 17:02 (5:02 pm) local time - I've corrected the article. Mikenorton (talk) 07:59, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Page 4 of this situation update has a timeline confirming this - note that the warning was triggered at 17:07 and the waves arrived only 3 to 6 minutes later. Mikenorton (talk) 09:34, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

It seem that BMKG use WIB (Indonesia Western Standard Time), while Sulawesi is in the WITA (Indonesia Central Standard Time) time zone, so actual local times of these events should be an hour later. I'll make the corrections and clarify which time zone is being talked about. Mikenorton (talk) 09:58, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Gustavoexel (talk) 19:33, 25 October 2018 (UTC) : Video footage that may help establish the timeline: https://9gag.com/gag/av8Z95M : earthquake at 18:02, tsunami at 18:06 (I'll leave to others with more experience to decide if that's credible enough to actually edit the page)

The NOAA report here, says that the first wave arrived 6 minutes after the earthquake, so that would be 18:08. Mikenorton (talk) 21:29, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Supershear

The latest version of the USGS "Finite fault" page states that modelling of the rupture propagation needs propagation velocities of at least 4.0 km/sec. The shear velocity for the upper brittle crust is generally given as 3.8 km/sec and the allowed propagation speed for normal rupture propagation is limited to the Rayleigh wave velocity 0.92 x shear velocity or about 3.5 km/sec. This suggests that the southward rupture propagation happened at supershear speeds. I'm not going to add anything as yet, but I note that Watkinson & Hall in their 2016 paper (citation #14) suggested that supershear rupture was possible on the southern part of the fault. To quote "As such, the Palu Koro Fault must qualify as a ‘fault superhighway’, potentially capable of sustained super shear rupture speeds (Robinson et al. 2010) and earthquakes up to M 7.6." Mikenorton (talk) 10:39, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

This has been backed up by a paper read at this year's AGU Fall meeting - here's the abstract. I'll wait for a full paper to be published on the subject before adding it to the article. Mikenorton (talk) 18:35, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Two papers have now appeared and have been added to the article. Mikenorton (talk) 13:54, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Number of missing

So far the Indonesian authorities (BNPB) have given a rather low figure for the number of missing. Other sources are referring to 1000+ missing, particularly in areas hit by liquefaction/mudflow and now we have a story suggesting more than 5,000 missing - [1], attributed to the Disaster Agency spokesman. I'm hoping for something official from the BNPB soon, but we should probably put something bigger than the 265 that we are currently showing. Mikenorton (talk) 09:47, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

This is where that wonderful expression "at least" comes in useful. We don't have precision, and will probably be quite some time before we do. Different place. Different cultures. Different ways of reporting on disasters. HiLo48 (talk) 10:03, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

I know, they've been working so far with the "known missing" - but with the communities consumed by the mudflows they are I imagine struggling with even estimating a number. We will wait for something definitive, but we could say something like "265 people are reported missing, although much larger numbers may be missing in areas hit by liquefaction". Mikenorton (talk) 10:12, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

from TheGuardian 2018-10-08 00.17EDT: “Based on reports from the heads of Balaroa and Petobo, there are about 5,000 people who have not been found,” said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster agency.

also, from same newsstory: "The official death toll stands at 1,944 but officials believe that ... that number could almost triple. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.106.15 (talk) 04:49, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I think that we should stick with the 5,000+ until or unless the BNPB come up with a different figure that explicitly includes all those in the areas affected by liquefaction. The 680 figure that is still being quoted is presumably people that are known to be missing. When whole communities are more or less wiped out, who is going to report people missing? Mikenorton (talk) 16:57, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

References

Death toll

I just checked the ReliefWeb link and discovered that an article in the Jakarta Post reports a final death toll of 4,340, nearly twice as high as the number we have in our article, quoting the Central Sulawesi Governor Longki Djanggola. The JP article also contains other final counts for things like building damage. The main difference is the 1,016 unidentifiable bodies that for some reason are not given a location in addition to the 2,141 in Palu, 289 in Sigi, 212 in Donggala, 15 in Parigi Moutong and 667 missing, which together total 3,324. I'm guessing that the 1,016 bodies were found in the areas of liquefaction, which would make sense. I just need to work out how to incorporate this information into our article. Mikenorton (talk) 12:28, 18 March 2019 (UTC)