Surf's up, dude!

*fear

OMG!

It's a Swedish family screaming. It's the son of the family that is screaming to his dad and the rest. "Spring. Fort då, fort! Fort pappa, fort, spring! SPRING, MEN SPRING!" which means: "Run. Faster, faster! Faster dad, faster, run! RUN, COME ON RUN!"
And in the end you hear a lady say: "Nu kommer det en till", which means: "Here comes another one."

Do you see that next wave coming behind the other? Keep running you fools. The wave magnitude gets higher and higher until the event starts to slow down.

----------------------------/-\------------------
------- . -------/-\ -------/---\ -----/-\ ----- .
____/ \____/ - \____/-----\___/---\___/ \ <- Ascii representation of a seismic event.
just like a wave length, the seismic event that caused this will case a wave like patter in the waves. small -> BIG -> small.

edit: I try ... I always suck at ascii art

WOW!!

Holy crap indeed.

>> ^BillOreilly:
Surf's up, dude!

Would you have said the same if this was a footage of Katrina approaching? Didn't think so... Dolt.

I can't believe that the guy stood there for so long....

The wave are only going to get bigger as it comes to shore guys, and its pretty large when its some way out.

wha? There was way scarier footage than this...

http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=tsunami%20&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_en___AU241&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#

Clip in your link is not a tsunami Raaagh.
A far as I know its a clip from Billabong Odyssey in which Mike Parsons surfs a huge swell at Jaws on Maui
>> ^Raaagh:
http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=tsunami%20&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_en___AU241&um=1&sa=N&tab=w
v#

if you had something to float on and you could swim far enoughf out so the wave dosent own you you could probably avoid most the danger presuming you can swim back to shore. the thing that nroamly kills people is geting hit by stuff ore geting pushed down streets and into things then geting stuck. if your in the watter far away from everything you can get hit by huge waves and be fine.

I'm not an expert or anything, but I figure even without getting hit by debris, the turbulence of the water as it comes ashore would prevent a swimmer from staying above water where you can breathe. It just keeps churning for so long that you are effectively spinning underwater until you drown. Scary thought.

the safest place to be when tsunami hits is out on the open ocean. you'd hardly even feel this one

Kinda amazes me how late these people realize they are in trouble. They go from "lookat the pretty wave mommie!" to "OMG RUN RUN RUN!" I guess people dont recognize danger until it slaps them in the face.

Clearly the camera survived, but did the family? I wonder what happened to them after the end of this clip.

i cant see why you guys dont understand why they react so late....5000 kilometers away from home and work, chilling on a sunny beach....who the hell would expect something like that, a wave reaching far inland. you guys never heard of a tsunami before this one came along....it easy to look at the footage now that we know what happened and say ´hey, they are slow´....

if you are in the ocean, the wave is gonna push you up and down a bit. that's all, as far as i know. it's not going to push you much towards shore, you're only little, there's not much to push on, and the wave won't be very high until it gets close to land. so it's pushing up, not shoreward. water isn't actually moving towards the shore, it's just rising and falling. of course when it gets to land it runs out of space and rises up and overtakes itself and produces turbulence underneath and starts to fall/roll over, pushing everything inland. getting hit in the ankles by a small wave on a previously dry street is very different to bobbing up and down on a huge wave out at sea.

and yes, this is scary. especially with the translation of the last line.

....and the fish, shall inherit, the upstairs bedroom.

I had heard the term 'tsunami' before. OK, big wave coming or something.. nowhere near where I live, doesn't happen often... This one was a real wake-up call, for me and for a LOT of people. And it is so unfortunate that a tsunami this big has to hit lots of tourist beaches before it gets this much attention.

To me, this was more personal than just news footage. I am from Finland (though now live in the US), and lots of Finnish, and other Scandinavian tourists spend their winter vacation on these beautiful beaches. This tsunami killed lots of Finns too. Among them: A very popular pop singer, Aki Sirkesalo with his whole family.. A great stage actor from my home town who had just retired, Aulis Rosendahl.. It could have been my mom, my cousin, a dear friend of mine on one of those beaches, just enjoying a great Christmas vacation in the sun!

You never know when something like this hits. You might be on the beach, going 'whoa, look at those weird waves' and never think twice what's going to happen next..

Nice to have the picture in posterity, but he should have long dropped the camera and rushed the family to safety.

Good to see there are so many people here who are always on the constant look out for gigantic waves and would have immediately recognized the problem without a moment's hesitation, even before the tsunami and in the middle of a beautiful day.

I hope the sarcasm got through.

Most of you would have taken just as long or waited for someone else to tell you to move.

or pulla Carradine in Escape From New York, and ride that bitch up Wilshire blvd.....

>> ^mintbbb:
I had heard the term 'tsunami' before.

Me too. I've also heard the term 'reverse tsunami.' A totally rad surfer dude named Duke caught one to get off of Gilligan's Island.

This video is watered down.

>> ^MaxWilder:
I'm not an expert or anything, but I figure even without getting hit by debris, the turbulence of the water as it comes ashore would prevent a swimmer from staying above water where you can breathe. It just keeps churning for so long that you are effectively spinning underwater until you drown. Scary thought.


I read a story of two divers who were diving offshore when the tsunami came through. If I remember correctly, they said that they were violently pushed down approximately 20-30 feet (they were already underwater). I'm not sure what would happen if you were on the surface though. As long as you were far enough out, I would imagine you would be safe.

Here's a link to the story I was referencing. Upon reading it again, I wonder if the 20-30 feet part is a detail I added on my own. Hope not!

Related post: http://www.videosift.com/video/An-even-more-insane-video-of-a-Tsunami-hitting-a-beach It's a bit shorter, but definitely as scary.

*travel

Adding video to channels (Travel) - requested by silvercord.

*water

Adding video to channels (Water) - requested by EDD.