October 30, 2020 Tsunami: Aegean Sea, Turkey

Ref #12798:

The shallow tremor triggered a mini-tsunami that flooded Izmir and Samos.

One of the 12 confirmed victims drowned, the Turkish emergencies agency said. Yasar Keles, an official in Sigacik, near Izmir, told BBC Turkish that a person died after their wheelchair was hit and overturned by the rising water.

There were reports of flooding in the [Izmir] after the sea level rose, and some fishermen are said to be missing.

A mini-tsunami flooded the port of Samos and a number of buildings were damaged.

In Greece, two teenagers were killed when a wall collapsed on Samos. Eight people were injured across the island.

Ref #12817:

To summarize, our findings show that in small bays with narrow entrances, the tsunami was much amplified and the impacts on these coast were more severe. The region contains many streams (called Azmak in the local language) in the bays, which increases the potential of tsunami inundation and damage as also experienced in this event. Another important point is the remarkable increase in the awareness of the people who mostly moved away from the shore after noticing the sea withdrawal. However, unfortunately, a victim, who could not resist the strong current generated and died, was reported. After the 2017 Bodrum-Kos tsunami, the Aegean Sea with its high seismic mobility and this event once more reminded considerable tsunami potential in the eastern Mediterranean.

Ref #12833:

The important role of landslides in such tsunami characteristics has been well documented. We do not rule out that a submarine landslide triggered by the Samos earthquake between the source and the north Samos coast may have been coupled with the broadside tsunami, thus resulting in the extreme wave height observed in Ayios Nikolaos at site K4 [...] The significantly lower tsunami height observed to the east and west of K4 is consistent with the rapid quasi-exponential attenuation of wave heights with distance from the landslide source due to strong wave dispersion found from a global data set of tsunamis triggered by landslides

Ref #12910:

The largest tsunami runup among the surveyed locations was measured as 3.8 m in Akarca at a distance of 91 m from the shoreline. The maximum tsunami height of 2.3 m (with a flow depth of 1.4 m) was observed at Kaleici region in Sıgacik, where the most severe tsunami damage was observed. [...] one casualty and several injured people from the tsunami on the Turkish side

Ref #13027:

A tsunami was generated by the Samos 2020 mainshock, producing minor damage at the surrounding coasts and especially in the towns of Vathy and Karlovasi in Samos Island (Greece; Triantafyllou et al., 2020) and Sigacik (Turkey) [...] At the waterfront of Seferihisar, flooding reached heights of 1.9 m, causing one fatality; in Akarca, the tsunami reached heights of over 1 m, penetrating 0.8 km inland; in Azmak, the tsunami penetrated 1.3 km inland and in Sigacik 0.3 km (Dag, 2020).

Ref #13076:

In the Greek islands, the 30 October 2020 Samos (Aegean Sea) tsunami mainly impacted the low-topography areas (below 2 m elevation) along the waterfront of Vathi, Samos, and caused minor damages in other ports and harbours in the wider region [...] Along the Aegean Turkish coast, damage from the tsunami was more extensive, with runup values as high as 3.8 m being measured in Akarca and inundation distance reaching ~ 760 m in Zeytineli (Dogan et al. 2021). A maximum runup of 5.3 ± 0.3 m was inferred for the town of Sigacik through satellite and topographic maps (Aksoy 2021 [ref#13190]).

Ref #13190:

The maximum run-up is measured as 5.3 +/- 0.3 m north of Sigacik