#International Tsunami Information Center

“April 1—April Fool’s Day—78 years ago a magnitude 8.6 earthquake from the Aleutian Islands generated a tsunami that took about four-and-a-half hours to hit our state,” said Laura Kong, Ph.D., director of International Tsunami Information Center. “By 6:30 a.m., waves that would reach 53 feet on the Big Island, 33 feet on Maui, 54 feet on Molokaʻi, 35 feet on Oʻahu and 45 feet on Kauaʻi, began to arrive.” The event resulted in $340 million in damage and the loss of nearly 159 people in the state, 96 in Hilo.

Locally generated tsunamis are why we must always be prepared. A local tsunami strikes fast and with little time for us to react—devastating waves can travel across the Hawaiian island chain in minutes, and not just in the month of April. If there is a strong earthquake and you are at a location along the coast, “Don’t Fool Around. Get to High Ground!”

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory uses dozens of seismometers to locate individual earthquakes and identify signals that are related to faulting and magma movement within our volcanoes.