Did the west coast of Haiti subside?

I would appreciate you all looking at this CNN report about a village on the west coast of Haiti that suffered a local tsunami immediately after the 7.0 earthquake. Of particular interest (and confusion I might add) is this statement:

Out in the distance, a lone tree stands. Residents say it used to be part of the beach, but now it's about 30 yards out in the blue ocean.

Here is the CNN article www.cnn.com...

You can see the tree starting about 35 seconds or so into the video at the top of the story. I cannot come up with an explanation for this other than the west coast dropped.

Can any of you?

Nice catch.. Half way through the video they show it again.. The only thing I can think of is that the land dipped a meter or so..

Could mean more earthquakes.. Maybe...

You know, if it were standing in say a foot of water, I would say - well, there is a temporary lagoon catching the water that came inland with the tsunami. But that's in what appears to be relatively deep water (at least multiple feet), and there is no apparent land past it - so it's not being trapped. That's open ocean!

O_O

And p.s....

IF the area of the west coast did drop, that would explain the local tsunami in this area!

reply to post by Valhall

I cannot come up with an explanation for this other than the west coast dropped.

They did say that two weeks before a stretch of coast went out to the tree. Perhaps when this tsunami happened it washed the sand away. In Florida, where I'm from, after hurricanes, it's not uncommon for the beach to not exist anymore or at least be considerably smaller than before the storm came. I would imagine that all that water going in then back really quickly could do the same thing as a day long hurricane can—if not more!

Regardless, it's an interesting find.

Originally posted by octotom
reply to post by Valhall

 

I cannot come up with an explanation for this other than the west coast dropped.

They did say that two weeks before a stretch of coast went out to the tree. Perhaps when this tsunami happened it washed the sand away. In Florida, where I'm from, after hurricanes, it's not uncommon for the beach to not exist anymore or at least be considerably smaller than before the storm came. I would imagine that all that water going in then back really quickly could do the same thing as a day long hurricane can—if not more!

Regardless, it's an interesting find.

Thank you so much! See, me being landlocked in the great state of Oklahoma makes me not familiar with all these coastline things. That is, indeed, another explanation that it just washed the beach out to sea.

Thank you again!


[edit on 1-24-2010 by Valhall]

The Caribbean Plate was mainly stationary during this quake, the energy displacement was on the American side of the Plates, thus the North side of the island shifted Westwards by some 10 meters, while the South side slid down some 5 meters. The energy dispersment between raised the Mountains inbetween some 4 meters (images from the Port Au Prince airport shows clearly landslides in the south Mountain region where the uplift occured.)

I've been wondering this the last few days when they started reporting from the ship yard, and started talking of how containers SLID into the sea. WTF?

They showed some more footage of the area today, and what appears to be pretty substantial constructions/docks are sloping into the sea, as if the sea floor dropped 25 feet.

S+F! Very interesting indeed.

I know they said the fault line runs directly underneath the capital, so I suppose it is quite possible that it shifted downwards when it moved.

Very impressive, though devastating to the area.

[edit on 25-1-2010 by mirageofdeceit]