Each incident alone was a nightmare come true for the offshore and shipping industries. But what happened that afternoon in the North Sea was more than just a living nightmare.
It was the apocalypse.
The coast
Eight minutes after the outer shelf collapsed, the tsunami hit the steep cliffs of the Faroes. Four minutes later it reached the Shetlands, and two minutes after that it slammed into the Scottish mainland and the southwest stretch of the Norwegian coast.
Nothing could flood Norway entirely – except perhaps the comet that scientists believed would wipe out all humanity if ever it were to crash into the sea. The Norwegian landscape was made up of mountain upon mountain, protected by sheer cliffs that even the biggest wave would find difficult to surmount.
But Norway lived on and from the water, and most of its major cities were at sea level, in the foothills of the towering mountains. All that separated them from the open water were small, flat archipelagos, some of which were home to cities themselves. Ports like Egersund, Hauge-sund and Sandnes in the south were at the mercy of the wave, just like Alesund and Kristiansund further north, and hundreds of smaller towns along the coast.
The worst hit was Stavanger.
All kinds of factors influenced what happened to a tsunami when it reached the coast – reefs, estuaries, underwater mountain ranges, sandbanks, offshore islands or even just the angle of a beach. As a result, the impact of the tsunami would either lessen or increase. Stavanger, the heart of the Norwegian oil industry, a key commercial and shipping centre, one of the oldest, prettiest and richest cities in Norway lay all but defenceless on the coast. Only a string of flat islands stretched north of the port, linked to the mainland by bridges. Minutes before the wave hit the city, the Norwegian government had alerted the Stavanger authorities, who had immediately broadcast a warning on radio, television and the web. But there was hopelessly little time to react. Evacuating the city was out of the question.
Unlike the Pacific states, where people had lived with tsunamis since time immemorial, Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic didn't have a warning system. While in Hawaii, the PTWS, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System represented over twenty Pacific states, including almost every coastal country from Alaska to Japan, Australia, Chile and Peru, people in countries like Norway knew nothing about tsunamis. That was one reason why Stavanger's final minutes were filled with confusion and dismay.
The wave closed in on the city before anyone had time to flee. It was still growing when the pillars of the inter-island bridges collapsed. Just before it reached the city, it towered to its full thirty metres. It didn't break immediately, because it was so long, but crashed vertically into the harbour defences, shattering the quays and warehouses, then racing inland. The old town, with its historic timber houses from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, was razed to the ground. From Vagen, the city's historic dock, the water burst into the city centre. When the tide hit Stavanger's oldest building, the Anglo-Norman cathedral, the windows exploded outwards before the walls collapsed and the debris was swept away. Anything in the path of the water was blasted aside with the force of a missile. But it wasn't just water that destroyed the city. Mud, twenty-tonne boulders, ships and cars battered the buildings like outsize projectiles.
By now the sheer wall of water had turned into raging foam. The tsunami no longer surged through the streets at such speed, but it was turbulent and destructive. The foam trapped pockets of air, which compressed on impact, generating fifteen bars of pressure, enough to dent a tank. The water snapped trees like twigs, and their trunks became part of its weaponry. Less than a minute after the wave had hit the sea defences, the entire harbour was in ruins, along with the adjoining district. As the water surged along the streets, the first explosions could be heard.
The people of Stavanger had no hope of survival. Anyone who attempted to outrun the towering wall of water ran in vain. Most of the tsunami's victims were struck dead by the force of the wave. The water was like concrete. They didn't feel a thing. Those who survived the impact soon suffered a similar fate as the water flung them into buildings or ground them against debris. Almost no one drowned, apart from those trapped in flooded cellars, but even then most people were killed by the force of the surging mass of water or smothered in mud. Those who drowned died a terrible death, but at least it was quick. Few had time to realise what was happening. Starved of oxygen, their trapped bodies floated in dark, chilly water, heartbeat faltering, then finally stopping as their metabolism ground to a halt. The brain lived for a little longer. After ten to twenty minutes the last flicker of electrical activity faded.
It took just two minutes more for the wave to reach the suburbs. The greater the expanse of land it covered, the shallower the seething water became. Its speed continued to diminish. The wave raged and surged through the streets, killing anyone it encountered, but at least the houses stayed standing. It was too soon, though, for the survivors to celebrate. The coming of the tsunami was the beginning of the devastation.
Its retreat was almost worse.
KNUT OLSEN AND HIS FAMILY experienced the retreating wave in Trondheim, where the tsunami had arrived a few minutes earlier. Unlike Stavanger, Trondheim had the fjord to protect it. Flanked by several larger islands and shielded by a headland, it extended almost forty kilometres inland, then widened into a basin on whose eastern shore the city had been built. Many of Norway's towns and villages were situated at sea-level along the shores of the fjords. Anyone looking at the map would assume that even the destructive power of a thirty-metre wave wouldn't threaten Trondheim.
The fjords turned out to be death traps.
When a tsunami entered a channel or an inlet, the water that was already being compressed from the bottom was suddenly restricted on both sides as well. Tens of thousands of tonnes of water squeezed into the strait. In Soigné Fjord, long but narrow in the mountains north of Bergen, the wave rose dramatically. Most of the villages alongside it were situated on high plateaus at the top of its banks. Jets of water sprayed towards them, but no serious damage was caused. Things were different at the end of the hundred-kilometre-long fjord, though, where several towns and villages were clustered on a flat spit of land jutting into the water. The wave obliterated them, then slammed into the mountain range beyond. The water shot up to 200 metres, scouring the slope of vegetation, then collapsing down. It continued its path along the fjord's tributaries.
Trondheim Fjord wasn't as narrow as Soigné Fjord and its banks weren't as high. That, and the fact that it widened as it went on, meant the water wasn't so constricted. All the same, the mound of water that hit Trondheim was big enough to sweep across the harbour and flatten part of the old town. The Nid broke its banks and spilled over into the districts of Bakklandet and Møllenberg. Avalanches of foam mowed down timber houses. In Kirkegata Street almost every house fell victim to the flood of water, including Sigur Johanson's. Its pretty facade gave way and the timberwork splintered, while the roof caved in on the wreckage of the walls. The debris was washed away, swept along by the raging torrent whose power and energy only let up when it reached the walls of the NTNU, where it swirled furiously, then began to flow back.
The Olsens lived one road up from Kirkegata Street. Their house, wooden like Johanson's, withstood the tsunami's assault. It trembled and shook. Furniture toppled, crockery smashed, and the floor of the front room sagged. The children were panicking and Olsen shouted to his wife to take them to the back. In truth he didn't know what to do, but since the wave had hit the front of the house he thought the back rooms might be safer. While his family took refuge, he made his way breathlessly to the front windows to see what had happened. As he crossed the floor, it sagged further, but held. Olsen clutched the window-frame, ready to rush back should another wave roll in. He looked out in stunned horror at the ruins of the city, the trees, cars and people bobbing in the water. There were screams and bangs as walls collapsed. Then explosions rang out, and red-black clouds rose above the harbour.