Hugh Nibley
“The tsunami or sea wave ’is the most spectacular and … appalling of all earthquake phenomena’ and almost invariably follows a major shakeup on the coast. Along with this, however, we have in the Book of Mormon record what seems to be a permanent submergence of coastal areas when ’the waters … [come] up in the stead thereof’ and remain (3 Nephi 9:7). Such a submergence happened on a spectacular scale in the Chilean earthquake of 1960: ’We would have taken these flooded stretches—permanently flooded—for coastal lagoons,’ a geologist reports, ’if here and there we had not seen roads that ran straight toward them and into them… . roads that vanished, or sometimes showed under the stagnant water, branching into what had been the streets of a town.’ In the New Madrid, Missouri, earthquake of 1811, two vast tracts of land were covered with fresh water both by the damming of streams and the bursting out of numerous earthquake blows or fountains, flooding the newly submerged areas.” (Since Cumorah, p. 235)