How many locally generated tsunamis have occurred in the Hawaiian Islands in recent history?
On the Big Island there have been several significant tsunamis resulting from local earthquakes or submarine landslides. The most recent and devastating of these tsunamis occurred in the early morning hours on November 29, 1975. Within a little over an hour, two earthquakes jolted the island. The first, located three miles inland of Kamoamoa village in Volcanoes National Park, had a Richter magnitude of 5.7. The second, centered two miles offshore of the Wahaula heiau (also in the park area) was much more violent having a Richter magnitude later to be determined as 7.2. The result of this earthquake was a 10 foot subsidence of the shoreline and the second most destructive local tsunami ever to be recorded in Hawaii. Campers in the remote Volcanoes National Park coast at Halape were awakened by the violent shaking of the first quake unknowing that a second and more severe quake would follow in just over an hour later. Some of them had barely gotten back to sleep when the second quake sh
