New Zealand tremor causes tsunami warnings

9:24 PM Wed 15 Jul 2009 GMT

'earthquake causes tsunami alert' .

Alarm bells rang for the South East Australian coast weather forecasters yesterday when a New Zealand earthquake centred near Invercargill sent shock waves across the Tasman, and coastguard services quickly issued tsunami warnings.

With memories of the lack of warnings that accompanied the devastating tsunami which hit Asia on Boxing Day 2004, the authorities were quick to act, and even after the tsunami warning was cancelled within hours, the weather bureau says east coast beaches may experience abnormal wave conditions today.

On the mainland, people were advised to get out of the water and move away from the edge of harbours, rock platforms and beaches.

Tremor was off the coast of Invercargill - .. .

People on low-lying areas of Lord Howe Island were evacuated to higher ground, and the population of locals and tourists waited for five hours to see if there was was any out of the ordinary wave activity.

All warnings by authorities were cancelled at 1.00am. Tony Leggett from the Bureau of Meteorology told the ABC it was better to be safe than sorry.

'From our perspective, the gauges that we've installed over the last four years worked, the software that we've installed was pretty good,' he said.

'We didn't really get a significant impact on Lord Howe that we thought we'd get, but you know that's unlikely that we'll ever really know why that is.'

Mr Leggett says the east coast can still expect unusual wave patterns throughout the day.

Editor's Note for Sailors: Sailors who experienced sudden inexplicable and dramatic shallowing of the water where they were anchored in Thailand at the onset of the 2004 tsunami, set to sea immediately. They then experienced hardly any wave motion as the tsunami passed under them. They were then gravely shocked when they returned to the shore and saw the damage.

by BW Media