ABSTRACT
The December 2004 tsunami generated by the M9 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake devastated many parts of the Kerala coast too (Kurian et al., 2005; Narayana et al., 2005). The Kerala coast (Figure 27.1) is located in the shadow zone with respect to the direction of propagation of the tsunami, and in that sense its severity was rather unexpected. Nearly 200 people were killed and hundreds injured in addition to the loss of houses and properties worth several crores of rupees (INR one crore =∼USD 220,000). Although there are reports of some previous tsunamis (1881, 1833, 1941, to mention a few) in the past, generated by earthquakes in the AndamanSumatra region, there is no documented evidence of any such events affecting the Kerala coast. An earthquake of 1945 M8.0 in the Mekran coast is believed to have generated significant tsunami run-up in some parts of Gujarat (Berninghausen, 1966; Wadia, 1981), and it is the only documented report of any tsunami affecting the west coast. To the best of our knowledge, the 2004 tsunami is the first of its kind to have affected the Kerala coast. In this paper, we document the results of the post-tsunami surveys (Kurian et al., 2005, 2006; Prakash et al., 2005) along the Kerala coast and evaluate geomorphological changes in the inner shelf, shores and backwaters of the Kayamkulam inlet region, where the impact of tsunami was most severe.
