The Newfoundland Tsunami of 1929

My husband’s mother often told me about the Tsunami that hit the Burin peninsula in 1929. She was not involved in this disaster but could recount every detail she had learnt from an early age. I had listened to her story, but just put it down to being a story. That is until I did some research and there before me lay the same story that she had told me many times, before her passing years ago.

It was November the 29th, 1929 that this Tsunami struck the Burin peninsula in Newfoundland and brought devastation to the communities and the people that lived there. The Burin Peninsula consists of many small communities so there were a lot of people affected. Waves from the ocean pounced in on these communities, at 40 Km an hour taking homes, stages, flakes and fish out to sea when it receded, besides these things, it took 28 lives.

What caused this Tsunami?

The reason for this disaster lay deep in the Atlantic Ocean. It happened at 5:02 Pm on Monday, November 18th, 1929. It was on the Grand Banks that the earth moved and caused the earthquake that would lead to this disaster. The Grand Banks was, and still is, the prime spot for fishing in Newfoundland. The Burin Peninsula lies approximately 265 km south of the Burin Peninsula and was in the direct path of the Tsunami that was about to happen. The earthquake registered 7.2 on the Richter scale and was so forceful that people in New York and Montreal felt it and some as far away as Portugal. Under the ocean terrible damage had been done as the earthquake had triggered a major landslide, which in turn, set several large waves plummeting across the ocean with speeds of 140 km an hour at first, until it slowed to the 40 km that hit the peninsula. While Newfoundland had no knowledge of what had happened tide gauges in Bermuda, Portugal, the Azores and along the eastern coast, did.

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Why didn’t the people know?

The people along the Burin Peninsula felt the earth quake but there was not much damaged caused so they continued with their daily lives. They felt the ground shake for approximately five minutes and then it settled down. They knew nothing of the wave that would hit them shortly after. To make matters worse the only telegraph line that connected these communities to the outside, had been damaged in an early storm that they had experienced. The people had no reason to fear the ocean in this way as there had never been a Tsunami hit any part of Newfoundland before. At the time there were no seismographs in any part of Newfoundland.