Response to comment on inundation studies for Nagapattinam region on the east coast of India due to tsunamigenic earthquakes from the Andaman region

The present case study deals with inundation mapping at Nagapattinam due to the tsunamigenic earthquakes from the Andaman region. Our study is definitely not to model a non-validated event but to study the run-ups at different locations along the east coast of India for large tsunamigenic events if it does happen in the Andaman source region. Several researchers have pointed out the occurrence of tsunamigenic earthquake on June 26, 1941 in the Andaman region (Jhingran 1953; Murty and Rafiq 1991; Pararas Carayannis 2005; Bilham et al. 2005; Jaiswal et al. 2008). Based on Murty and Rafiq (1991), we mention that ‘‘While some scientists have estimated deaths of over 3,000 people along the east coast of India in the 1941 tsunami, there are no reliable data on the number of deaths’’. Ortiz and Bilham (2003) have not totally ruled out the damage and the number of deaths due to the 1941 tsunami but state that no official or unofficial account of the remote tsunami exists. The source parameters for this tsunamigenic earthquake have been used by different authors for the 1941 Andaman tsunami which have been tabulated in Table 1. In our study, the source parameters given by these researchers for the 1941 earthquake have been used as an example. The strike angle and Dip angle have been taken from Ioualalen et al. (2007) where they have modeled the 2004 Sumatra earthquake by dividing the entire source region into 5 segments. In their model, the two segments S4 and S5 form the Andaman region. In our research paper, we were looking for the worst–case scenarios of large thrust type tsunamigenic earthquakes and its impact along the east coast of India from the Andaman Source region as stated in the title. This study has been carried out keeping in mind the historical tsunamis from the Andaman-Sumatra region which are known to have washed away temples along the east coast of India. We are aware of distinguishing between tsunamigenic and non-tsunamigenic earthquakes. The theoretical investigations using the seismograms of several sea earthquakes including 2004 Sumatra and 2005 Nias have been carried out to distinguish between the