July 17, 2005
ALICIA CHANG
Associated Press

VENTURA, Calif. - The tiny wave generated by a major undersea earthquake off the far Northern California coast last month revealed large gaps in how ready communities hugging the Pacific shoreline are for a true tsunami threat.

Although the alert was canceled about an hour after blaring sirens warned some towns of a could-be killer wave that never arrived, the effects of the magnitude-7.2 quake are still rattling emergency planners.

Some residents received no warning on the evening of June 14 - in other cases, word was not spread wide enough fast enough. And the event exposed how some heavily populated areas lack an evacuation plan even if they did receive quick warning.

Pacific Rim states tend to focus on more common deadly disasters such as earthquakes and wildfires. While catastrophic tsunamis rarely strike the West Coast, waves could reach land within 20 minutes and the potential for damage and loss of life has increased with the rising tide of coastal development.

The latest offshore quake has jolted emergency officials into action.

Washington state will install more warning sirens along its coast. Oregon plans to renew its tsunami danger education efforts.

California will upgrade its automated calling system that alerts local emergency planners. On Tuesday, officials from California's 15 coastal counties will meet behind closed doors in San Francisco to pinpoint where communication went wrong last month and how better to deal with the next wave.

State officials also are meeting regularly with local emergency workers to brief them on preparedness and discuss the June 14 dry run.

"I wouldn't say this was a failure," Steve Sellers of the state Office of Emergency Services told about 50 first responders and emergency coordinators recently in the Southern California seaside city of Ventura. "But we need to do some fine-tuning."

Fresh concerns first followed last year's mammoth undersea earthquake that generated killer waves across Southeast Asia, killing an estimated 180,000 people. Earlier this year, the U.S. unveiled a $37.5 million plan to create a tsunami warning system to protect both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts by mid-2007.

Last month's quake, which also prompted warnings in Canada and Mexico, was a reminder of the Pacific coast's own deadly history.

Scientists studying faults under the Pacific have found evidence that major quakes capable of generating tsunamis recur about every 200 years. Since 1812, California has been hit by 14 tsunamis that produced waves 3 feet or higher. Six of those caused significant damage.

The most storied tsunami followed the 9.2 magnitude Good Friday earthquake that struck Alaska on March 27, 1964. It produced tsunami waves that killed 131 people. In California, 11 people died and nearly 30 city blocks in Crescent City were washed away. It was the only tsunami known to have caused deaths in the continental United States.

But while a tsunami threat is real, the waves are far less common than earthquakes, wildfires, landslides and floods - so preparedness doesn't attract much funding.

Few California counties have a tsunami preparedness budget and only two places - Crescent City and the University of California, Santa Barbara - have evacuation plans in place for residents, according to state officials. California receives about $274,000 a year from the federal government for tsunami planning and spends most of that mapping areas most exposed to 30-foot waves.

The underwater earthquake about 90 miles west of Crescent City produced a 1-centimeter wave - roughly the width of an adult's finger - detected by an ocean pressure-measuring buoy. Tsunami waves may not even be noticeable to boaters as they speed across the open ocean; it's when they slow down and pile up in shallow coastal water that the waves can become so destructive.

In far Northern California and parts of Oregon, data from the buoy prompted sirens and thousands of people fled for higher ground. Many residents heard warnings through TV and radio, but some remote communities received no notice.

Last month, the director of the California Office of Emergency Services, Henry Renteria, acknowledged gaps in the alert system but told state lawmakers that he was pleased with the overall response. The state has since retrained its staff and plans to spend $300,000 to expand a warning system that would automatically contact cell phones and pagers of as many as 2,000 local emergency planners.

California isn't alone in reacting.

Washington state has decided to double the number of sirens along its nearly 160 miles of coastline this summer. Currently, there are only six sirens, said Mark Clemens, a spokesman for the state Emergency Management Division.

Oregon plans to distribute tsunami danger pamphlets and brochures.

"We have a culture of awareness that we're building along the coast," said Jay Wilson, coordinator of the earthquake and tsunami program at the Oregon Emergency Management.

Some of the work has to be done among emergency officials.

According to a report by the California Office of Emergency Services, state officials used a teletype system to warn counties within seven minutes of receiving the tsunami alert from the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center. While most 911 centers received the warning, some emergency planners in the San Francisco Bay area were caught unaware. The warning expired by the time the state tried to contact them individually.

The June 14 quake also revealed confusion within some local governments in all three states. After the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center sent out its bulletin, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii - which does not issue tsunami threats to the Western U.S. - stated there was no danger in the Pacific islands.

Coastal communities unfamiliar with the difference between the two warning centers wasted valuable time trying to sort out what they thought were conflicting alerts, officials in all three states said. The states are working with the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration either to block the Hawaii warnings or make the messages less confusing.

"This was a good test," said Eric Boldt, a warning coordination meteorologist at NOAA. "There was no tsunami, but we all found out there were problems."

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On the Net: California Office of Emergency Services: http://www.oes.ca.gov

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