An 8.8-magnitude earthquake is no ordinary event. It is the sort of seismic jolt that history remembers, one capable of reshaping coastlines and triggering tsunamis that level towns. So when such a quake struck off the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, the world braced for calamity. Warnings rang out across the Pacific. Evacuations followed swiftly. Yet the anticipated destruction ~ especially from tsunami waves ~ did not materialise in the form many feared. And in that lies a story not of overreaction, but of resilience, science, and a bit of fortune. At the heart of the matter is a profound truth: the severity of an earthquake does not guarantee the scale of a tsunami. While the quake in question was a textbook megathrust ~ caused by one tectonic plate diving beneath another ~ it did not unleash the sort of towering, city engulfing waves seen in the Indian Ocean in 2004 or Japan in 2011.

Instead, the tsunami reached a........

© The Statesman