Display listing of nearby tsunami events

Sitting in the shade away from the heat, Jean Frank is making a fishing net that he hopes will help him return to his life as a fisherman. With a lifetime of experience behind him, the old fisherman said in Creole that it was the first time he had ever seen a wall of water come ashore. The tsunami apparently took the lives of at least seven villagers in the town of Petit Paradis, on Haiti's western coast... For the first time, residents of this coastal village are telling the story of a localized tsunami that hit here immediately after the 7.0 earthquake. The relatively small tsunami reached a few hundred yards into the village, which was devastated by the quake. Steeve Badio is a fisherman here. His house was destroyed, as were the small canoes carved from wood he used to earn a living. "The sea went back," he explained in Creole. "It sounded like a helicopter ... and then the waves came up," he said. Badio says the water was higher than the trees, and when it returned back to the ocean, Badio's father was gone and so were his two nephews: 4-year-old Wolga and 2-year-old James. Badio says they haven't been able to have a funeral without their bodies. (reference #6477)

The waves, which averaged about ten feet (three meters) high, slammed shores along the Bay of Port-au-Prince and the southern coast of the island of Hispaniola (see map), which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. (reference #6791)

At least 4 people were killed by alocal tsunami in the Petit Paradis area near Leogane. Tsunami waves were also reported at Jacmel, Les Cayes, Petit Goave, Leogane, Luly and Anse a Galets. The tsunami had recorded wave heights (peak-to-trough) of 12 cm at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and 2 cm at Christiansted, US Virgin Islands. (reference #1053)