Last July's tsunami in Papua New Guinea was as intense and catastrophic as news reports indicated, a scientific survey has found, and recommendations have been put forth to avert such a disaster in the future. The tsunami and the earthquake that generated it occurred July 17, 1998, and the International Tsunami Survey Team (ITST) began a weeklong investigation July 31. It was the ninth major tsunami and the most devastating the team has studied in the past 6 years. The team was able to precisely map the inundation and determine that media reports of extreme flows to fairly small sections of shoreline were accurate. Wave heights of 10 m were confirmed along a 25‐km stretch of coastline with maximum heights of 15 m and overland flow velocities of 15–20 m/s. Both are extreme measurements, given the moderate size of the earthquake and its aftershocks.The team noted that the force of a tsunami current on an object is roughly 1000 times that of a wind of the same speed.