HONOLULU (KHON2) — Hawaiʻi is no stranger to the ocean’s power. Most people know tsunamis as towering waves caused by earthquakes far across the Pacific.
What many do not know is that the islands themselves once created some of the biggest waves ever recorded in the geologic record.
Two massive submarine landslides, one off Oʻahu and the other off Molokaʻi, unleashed tsunamis so large that they reshaped shorelines and left behind evidence still visible today.
Nū‘anu and Wailau collapses
The Nū‘anu landslide on Oʻahu and the Wailau landslide on Molokaʻi together form one of the largest landslide complexes on Earth…