King tide in Phuket spurs online fears of a tsunami – it wasn’t

There was a lot of online chatter yesterday which was claiming there had been a small tsunami along the western shores of Phuket.

The posts were correlating a king tide (unusually high tide) in Phuket, that was at its highest at 1.27pm (Sunday afternoon), some rough seas and a strong south-westerly swell in the Andaman Sea and Phang Nga Bay, and a small earthquake in northern Sumatra earlier on Sunday morning.

Some online posts of a flooded road in Kalim were describing it as a ‘tsunami’ as waves washed onto the low-lying road heading into Patong.

SCREENSHOT: Newshawk Phuket

PHOTO: Newshawk Phuket

There were also posts with photos taken near the Sarasin bridge at the north of the island.

Earlier on Sunday morning there was a small earthquake in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, about 55 kilometres from West Aceh Regency. It was a 4.9 magnitude earthquake, land-based. There was no tsunami warning issued. The quake struck at 7.11am, local time, almost 6 hours before the king tide was at its highest, washing waves onto some low-lying areas along Phuket’s west coast.

There was no connection between the king-tide along the Andaman coastline and the earlier land-based earthquake in northern Sumatra.

The king tide also caused some damage at the Maya Bay pier, on the east side of Koh Phi Phi Leh, where the steel pier structure tore away from the floating plastic pontoons. The access to Maya Bay was closed down after the incident.

The structure was only completed late last year for the reopening of Maya Bay to avoid boats having to enter the bay from the entrance and park inside the bay, as in the past.

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PHOTO: Five Star Marine, Phuket