June 16, 1819 Tsunami: Kutch, India

1819, June 16. India, Kutch. Severe earthquake with large changes in the elevation of the land. "... the town of Sindree (Sindri, 26o35'N., 71o55'E.) and adjoining country were inundated by a tremendous rush from the ocean, and all submerged, the ground sinking apparently about 14 feet". (reference #42)

1819, June 16. Earthquake caused 6-9 m land uplift for 90 km land uplift called Allah Band. Tsunami in the Arabian Sea. (reference #96)

1819, June 16. At approximately 7 p.m., on 16 June 1819, Fort Sindri and masonry buildings in villages within a radius of 80 km were destroyed by a violent earthquake. A tsunami from the Arabian Sea surged across the Rann and sand vents in the region were active to a height of 2-3 m for three days, venting water and gas (Bombay Public Consultations, 1819; MacMurdo, 1835)... The fort at Anjar was destroyed, and a similar fate befell the fort at Sindri in the Rann of Kachchh. Sketches of Sindri fort before and after the earthquake collected by Lye11 (1853) are reproduced in Johnson and Kanter (1992), and a view of the decaying ruins in 1869 is reproduced in Wynne (1872). According to testimony elicited by Burnes (1833, 1835) a tsunami flooded the Rann of Kachchh within minutes of the earthquake and survivors were forced to climb to the top of the ruin where they were rescued the following morning by boat. Ballantyne writing from Jooria on the northern shore of Kachchh in June 17 relates (MacMurdo, 1835) that "the whole town is a complete ruin" and on June 18th describes ground fissures symptomatic of catastrophic-lateral-spreading; "on examining the different rents, we found them to be of various extent from an inch to a foot in breadth; the depth however, being considerable, being 10, 15 and 20 feet. In some places a gravely soil had been thrown out; in others a wet black earth... estimates moment magnitude 7.7. (reference #2589)

1819, June 16. Large earthquake in western India generated a large tsunami - the wave would have arrived in Arabia in about 4 hours, but there is no record of affects in the Arabian Peninsula. (reference #4083)

1819, June 16. The principal changes are clearly described by Burnes, who saw them for the first time in 1827. The little brick fort of Sindri, 150 ft. square, was, he says " overwhelmed at once with a tremendous inundation of water from the ocean, which spread on all sides, and in a few hours completely flooded the country, and converted the tract, which had before been hard and dry, into an inland lake, extending for sisteen miles on each side of Sindri... Of the four towers but one now remains; the inhabitants saved themselves from destruction by ascending it, and only reached the land on the following day by boats". "It was soon discovered ", he adds, "that this was not the only alteration effected...; as the inhabitants of Sindri observed at a distance of five miles northward, a mound of earth or sand in a place where previously the soil was low and level. It extended nearly east and west about sixteen miles... The natives called this 'Allahband' or the band of God, in allusion to its not being, like the other dams in the Indus, the work of man." (reference #516)