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Tsunamis have taken societies by surprise before, altering lives, challenging beliefs, even affecting the course of history. A tsunami may be the source of the legend of the lost city of Atlantis that disappeared into the sea. A tsunami that swamped Lisbon, Portugal in the eighteenth century influenced philosophical discourse about God’s wrath.
Catastrophes are both inevitable and unpredictable, but over thousands of years, some communities have found ways of working with their environment, and with each other, to manage the risks and sustain their way of life.
 Strategies for Tsunamis
In 1998, an earthquake sent three large waves surging onto Papua New Guinea’s northern coast, killing at least 2,200 people and leaving 9,000 homeless.
This region, the Sepik Coast, is one of the most seismically hazardous in the world. It sits perched at the edge of the vast Australian Plate, which advances on the Pacific Plate at a rate of more than two inches every year.
Sepik Coast people have developed strategies that help them sustain their way of life in their hazardous environment:
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Social strategies—People along the coast are bound together by shared ideas and expectations about friendship, and friendships between families in different communities are inherited from one generation to the next. In times of need—such as the 1998 tsunami—people know they can turn to their inherited friends elsewhere on the coast for help.
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Natural resources—People are careful not to put all their hopes for survival on plant and animal species that may not survive tsunamis, earthquakes, or droughts. Instead of domesticating pigs or cultivating vegetable gardens, people make full use of naturally abundant species such as fish and sago palms.
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Despite all the upheavals that their region has experienced, Sepik Coast people have been able to maintain their way of life over many generations.
Continue to The New Madrid Intraplate Quake. >>
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