The tsunami that ravaged the Indonesian city of Palu was outsized compared to the earthquake that spawned it, but other factors -- including a long, narrow bay -- conspired to create monster waves, scientists say.
At least 844 people are already known to have died in the disaster, and officials say that toll is likely to rise -- perhaps into the thousands.
The 7.5-magnitude quake, which struck early evening on Friday -- a time when many in the Muslim-majority country would have been at the mosque -- brought buildings down all over Palu and its surrounding area.
But it was an unlikely confluence of geophysical conditions that gave rise to a localised tsunami that washed away many other structures and certainly added to the human cost.
"The waves were at least two-to-three metres high, and possibly twice that," said Jane Cunneen, a research fellow at Curtin University's Faculty of Science and Engineering in Bentley, Western Australia, and an architect of the Indian Ocean's tsunami warning system, developed under UN guidance.
Judging by the earthquake, however, the tsunami shouldn't have been nearly that big.
AFP