March 19, 2017 Tsunami: Persian Gulf, Iran

Reference #11764:

A second body was pulled from the coasts of Iran's southern port city of Dayyer on Monday evening, while four other victims are still unaccounted for after huge waves cause by a sea tornado -known as Seiche- pounded the coastal city on March 19, an official said. Speaking to Tasnim on Tuesday morning, Mohammad Hassan Basti, a deputy to governor of Iran's southern province of Bushehr, said the body of an eight-year-old boy was retrieved from the pier of Dayyer on Monday evening. He was the second victim among a total of six people lost in the deadly sea storm and subsequent flooding that hit Dayyer on Sunday, he noted. According to Basti, 22 people have been wounded in the incident, 80 dwellings have been destroyed, urban infrastructure has been damaged, and some 200 boats have been wrecked in the natural disaster. Head of Bushehr's Persian Gulf Oceanography Centre Ehsan Abedi had announced that the reason behind the giant waves and the sea overflow was a natural phenomenon called Seiche, saying it occurs when strong winds push water and cause water levels to drop at one end and rise at the other.

Reference #11970:

On 19 March 2017, a series of waves from the Persian Gulf inundated significant parts of the Port of Dayyer on the southern coastlines of Iran (Fig. 1), some time between 8:00 and 8:20 AM local time (4:30-4:50 GMT). It resulted in one death and five people missing, and reportedly capsized about 300 boats and caused ~$10 million of damage. According to Iranian state media, water progressed as far as ~1 km in land and video footage recorded by local individuals or seasonal travelers reveals surges of up to 2 m in a relatively calm, cloudy morning, even though a significant thunderstorm had occurred a few hours earlier. Local news outlets place the largest extent of destruction at Seyyed-Safa, a neighborhood close to the cruise port.

In summary, neither geological nor atmospheric sources can perfectly explain the distribution of amplitudes as obtained in our field survey. While we prefer the meteorological model, we suggest that its remaining misfits may be due to imprecisions in small-scale bathymetry and that future studies of the 19 March 2017 tsunami would warrant the use of a better bathymetry model for the region.

Reference #12474:

The waves affected about 40 km of the coastline, causing five deaths and injuring 20 people. Local authorities reported damage to ~300 fishing and recreational boats and 85 coastal properties.

The 2017 Dayyer event is the first known example of recorded destructive waves in the Persian Gulf, which caused severe damage and killed people.

Reference #12544:

The event was found to be very local; maximum trough-to-crest wave heights were 1.97 m at Dayyer and 2.34 m at Asaluyeh (both in Iran), near-field cities located * 80 km from each other; the dominant wave periods were 15-20 min. At all other sites, located along the entire coast of the Persian Gulf and in the Gulf of Oman, the observed wave heights were\35 cm.

Reference #13742:

During the 19 March 2017 event in the Persian Gulf, 5 people died and 22 people were injured