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The '1929 Grand Banks earthquake' was a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that occurred on November 18, 1929 in the Atlantic Ocean off the south coast of Newfoundland.
The earthquake was centered on the edge of the Grand Banks, about 400 km (250 miles) south of the island. It was felt as far away as New York and Montreal.
The quake, along two fault planes 250 kilometres south of the Burin Peninsula, triggered a large submarine landslide (200 km³). It snapped 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and led to a tsunami (Japanese for "harbour wave") that arrived in three waves, each up to seven metres high, that struck the coast at 105 km/h about three hours after the earthquake occurred. The waves travelled at speeds up to 129 km/h at the epicentre. The tsunami destroyed many south coastal communities on the Burin Peninsula, killing 29 people and leaving 10,000 more homeless. All means of communication were cut off by the destruction, and relief efforts were further hampered by a blizzard that struck the day after. It took more than three days before the ''SS Meigle'' responded to an SOS signal with doctors, nurses, blankets, and food. Donations from across Newfoundland, Canada, the United States and Britain totalled $250,000.
The waves were also recorded across the Atlantic in Portugal.
As of 2007, it is the only recorded tsunami to have struck Canada's east coast.

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References

★ I.V. Fine, A.B. Rabinovich, B.D. Bornhold, R.E. Thomson, and E.A. Kulikov. (2005) The Grand Banks landslide-generated tsunami of November 18, 1929: preliminary analysis and numerical modeling, ''Marine Geology'' 215, 45–57.

★ SOS! Canadian Disasters, a virtual museum exhibition at Library and Archives Canada

External links

★ ''Tsunami: The Newfoundland Tidal Wave Disaster'' - Maura Hanrahan (2004) ISBN 1894463633

★ The South Shore disaster: Newfoundland's tsunami

★ Not Too Long Ago (first hand accounts of the tsunami, pp. 51-60)