The tsunami was triggered when underwater earthquakes averaging at Magnitude 9.1 was occurring 765 miles off the coast of California. This created the tsunami and set it in motion. It was barreling toward the West Coast at 380 mph (611.55 km/h). Tsunami Warnings were issued for the entire west coast as waves as high as 650 ft were heading for it. Two and a half hours later it crashed into the entire west coast as a 125 ft wave to start with. After another 5.5 hours the fourth and biggest wave impacted them at a staggering 650 ft in height, this washed away entire counties and cities as far as 19 miles inland. The succeeding waves were gradually decreasing in size and they persisted for another 2 days. Finally, on March 4th the last tsunami wave came in as a 45 ft wave and it was over and done at that point. After it was all said and done, over one million people were directly killed by the tsunami. Damages exceeded 200 billion dollars.