July 22 tsunami, quake warning just a prank

By Emmanuelle Landais Staff Reporter
Published: June 28, 2009, 23:14

Dubai: Bathers and coastal residents need not worry about an e-mail that was circulated on the internet warning of a tsunami that would take place on July 22, 2009. It's a hoax.

Gulf News reader Fatima Lamya, received the e-mail forwarded to her by a cousin. "I was actually 99 per cent sure that this mail is fake. I was not scared. I got this mail from my cousin and I think he got this from his friend. Many fake news is spreading like this," she said.

The e-mail appears to come from someone sincere and caring.

"I just wanted to let you know that please stay away from the beaches all around in the month of July. There is a prediction that there will be another tsunami or earthquake hitting on 22 July 2009. It is also when there will be sun eclipse," reads the e-mail.

According to a forecaster at the Dubai Meteorological Office, predictions like this are totally unreliable as the weather cannot be forecast that far into the future.

"It sounds like a complete load of rubbish. You cannot predict so far ahead and tsunamis are not linked to sun eclipses," the forecaster said.

The e-mail states that Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak, Singapore, Maldives, Australia, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines are going to be badly hit.

Several websites which serve to quash rumours and suppress urban legends have posted confirmations that the tsunami warning is a hoax.

Snopes.com concludes that scientists who have spent their whole lives studying earthquakes still cannot predict when and where one will hit. Snopes.com says the e-mail started circulating in April 2009 and has been taken from a blog.

Giant wave: Looking back

On December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia triggered a series of tsunami along the coast of most land masses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing more than 225,000 people in 11 countries.

The tremor, known as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, is the second largest earthquake ever recorded with a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3.