[EAS] Quake and Tsunami Warnings

[Lowell Kiesow]

I can give you a few, personal observations from Washington State.  EAS was used for a Tsunami Watch at 23:45 PST.  It was issued by NWS on weather radio.  KPLU ran it as the box was on auto at that time.  I was still up and saw it run on one TV station.  Once I saw that, I got curious and started looking on the web for more.  For at least an hour, NONE of the NOAA web pages had ANY information about the west coast warnings and watches.  In fact, one statement from the West Coast Tsunami Warning Center continued to say no alerts were in effect.  Another page, that might have been more current, would never load at all.  I don't think NOAA's web servers are up to the challenge, even at 1 am.  NOAA needs some serious server bandwidth, but I doubt they have any funding.  I did find one WA coastal county who had information on their emergency management home page almost immediately (Kudos to Grays Harbor County).  The other three counties didn't post anything before I stopped looking at 1:15 am. 
 
Let's just say this points at that the web is not the place to get current emergency information.  That seems to be reserved for NWS radio.  A co-worker said that by 1:30 PST, it was up on the Google home page, which is pretty good.
 
WA has a fairly extensive network of warning sirens in coastal communities and popular beach areas.  I presume the sirens were used.  Evacuation routes are well marked.
 
One thing to remember about a locally generated Tsunami, when there are only minutes of advanced notice, is that it is a self-announcing hazard.  People living in coastal areas should know that if they feel an earthquake, they need to start moving to higher ground immediately.  Basically, for a local Tsunami, education should be far more effective than warning systems. This event should help educate the public about Tsunamis.
 
On another list, I read about some panic and traffic jams in some CA coastal communities.  That is kind of surprising for an event with over six hours of advanced warning.  Of course, if you don't have an NWS SAME radio, it would be easy to sleep through the warnings and get a bit of a surprise upon waking and connecting with some form of news media.
 
On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Adrienne Abbott <nevadaeas at charter.net> wrote:

>I'm getting questions this morning about the use of the warning systems in
>Japan and the other areas affected by the quake and tsunami. Were the
>warning systems used in Japan and other countries successfully deployed to
>the citizenry? Were the warnings effective? Did they save lives? How were
>the warnings issued? Did it make a difference that the quake and tsunami
>occurred during the day on that side of the world?

>What about our warning systems here-we have reports that EAS activations
>were issued and I know California's EDIS was used to issue warnings and
>information. Did these messages get to the proper agencies, officials,
>media, and the public? How was the information sent out in Alaska,
>Washington State and Oregon? Were Emergency Managers able to issue warnings
>through broadcast as well as other media? Do officials think all the "live
>code" testing of the tsunami network made a difference? Did the EAS
>activations go through on all the broadcast stations as planned? Is anyone
>going to collect information on the EAS activations and review that data?
>Does this event tell us anything about the use of CAP? Are we headed in the
>right direction? Is there anything we can learn from this event, especially
>in light of the upcoming Part 11 rewrite?

>Even here in the High Desert, our State Emergency Operations Center
>partially geared up to provide support for our neighbors over the "hill" in
>California. What was the impact/reaction from other, non-coastal states?

>Adrienne

>--
>Lowell Kiesow, Chief Engineer
>KPLU 88.5, KVIX 89.3, KPLI 90.1
>www.kplu.org  www.jazz24.org