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After the Dec 26 2004 well-publicized tsunami across the Indian Ocean, there have been reports of whole agricultural areas being wiped off the face of the earth, and speculation about the long-term prospects of coconut plantations.

Forget about the people - Bill Clinton is going to look after them. And after him the IMF and the World Bank will put the survivors in debt for the rest of their lives (and probably a few generations of their offspring).

I think the worry about coconuts has been exaggerated  

Tsunamis occur more frequently than we in the West suppose. Many of them go unreported and unlamented.

Most happen in the Western Pacific, the home of coconuts
 
I suspect the coconuts have got used to the tsunamis by now

• Accurate figures are a myth - 13486 dead counted in 1771 (Ryukyus) ? 25674 in Chile in 1868 ? We still haven't a final count on the tsunami in the Indian Ocean - but it's more than 300,000

• Multiply mortality figures 150 years old or more by 10 to get a reasonable idea of severity. There were less people to die then.

• Ignore the Greek islands 1410 BC tsunami - that was the Mt Thera caldera exploding - the end of Atlantis - and the casualty figure is nothing more than the wildest speculation.

• But pay attention, America, (Land of the Free and Complacent), to the 1 November 1755 tsunami in Portugal.
  
  This was caused by just  one catastrophic collapse of a small bit of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands. It's about to happen again, anytime. It will cause havoc - New York will suffer somewhat more than on 9/11, and when seawater laps their knees in Washington, GWB and his bunch of poltroons will probably retreat to Crawford, Texas, and, with Fox News,
  'plan' a   'War Against.................................What?'

Much the same damage is done by storm surges - the lethal combination of high tides and typhoons.

• My island of Siargao had just such a storm surge in 1984, when an errant typhoon deviated just a couple of degrees south from the usual path through Samar and north to Luzon. 

• The sea is officially reported to have risen by 3.5 metres (the height of an average house here). 

• The inhabitants of my town (General Luna, Siargao) sheltered in caves on the local low hills. Some of the faithful took refuge in the concrete church.

• The town was devastated, with most of the wooden and palm leaf houses washed away, if not in the initial surge, then in the backwash as it drained away, just as suddenly, but carrying tree trunks and other debris, to knock away what was left. 

• One of the most dangerous things in a typhoon are the flying coconuts, with the lethal potential of cannon balls, taking advantage of the situation to disperse a little further than mere gravity will allow.
  

The townsfolk rebuilt, with little outside aid. The good Roman Catholic Church sent the faithful a bill for their overnight accommodation.

Apologies for the chart - it was just as unreadable in the original, and I'm not sure now where it came from. It also shows only reported surges. Whole areas of sparsely inhabited coastline have no labels, but probably haven't gone unscathed, or the locals had no way of telling anyone what had just devastated their lives. 

50,000 people have just been made homeless in Jolo, Sulu Islands just now (March 2005), because Glorietta, the little lady president of the Philippines, has declared war on Abu Sayyaf  (associates of 'Al Qaida' say the Americans - but really only a little bunch (about 150 of them) of average thieves and pirates, and a few patriots who wonder why they are subject to a bunch of rabid Catholics from the far North, when they would prefer to join their Muslim co-religionists in Indonesia).  Maybe nobody outside the Philippines has even heard of this. (Except some crazy half-educated Neocon on the sub-sub-SE Asia desk in the far reaches of the Pentagon).

1000 people (more or less) died late last year in catastrophic flooding in Aurora, Luzon (top RH side of the map above) caused mostly by illegal logging that has denuded mountainsides.  A hugely publicized logging ban, imposed at the time, has been quietly lifted, just 3 months later.

So... why am I worrying about coconuts?

I dunno.... let's get on with it, anyway

The storm affected coconuts in very different ways, and they are the most reliable indicator now of the specific damage caused twenty years ago.

Most of them leaned over, stopped, considered, and went on growing.

The majority were quite unaffected. Coconut trees, after all, are used to typhoons, storms and heavy rain, extra high tides, etc. Millions of them survive every year's typhoon season in the Philippines, and have done so for perhaps millions of years. 

Certain parts of the shoreline (slightly raised above sea level, for instance) had no storm damage at all.

• GL itself, and neighbouring coastal barangays are situated about 50cm above spring high tide level. Even so, the storm surge effects were not universal. Sheltered areas had hardly any flooding.

• Areas where the wave had a long 'fetch' or where it was funnelled into a narrower front by a nearby island or reef were most affected.

• Just east of GL there is just such a place. Even so, only a minority of trees still show storm damage, and most have staged a miraculous recovery. Most of the pictures shown here came from that small area. 

• Coconut trees are uniquely adapted to the sandy and generally unpromising soils of the foreshore and beach. Many of them survive, year after year, at the very edge of the lapping (or churning) sea.