How to Determine if There is Currently a Tsunami Warning in Effect along the Oregon Coast. A response to concern if there was a tsunami warning here after the 15 August 2005, magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Japan.
Oregon Emergency Management. 2005. After action report: West Coast Tsunami Warning, June 14, 2005. Published in August 2005. In my opinion, this report does not adequately identify all problems in the responses of Oregon Emergency Management and local governments along the Oregon Coast to the June 14 tsunami warning (see material below). If problems are not identified or are minimized, they can not be addressed and will continue to be problems. However, it is currently the most comprehensive report available and does point out some issues.
24 June 2005 Letter to Editor: Consider Information Source by Range Bayer. Discussion that local emergency responders did not read the June 14 tsunami warning message correctly. An excerpt:
"Preparation for a tsunami includes checking sources of information to be sure that they are for our area. Hopefully, Oregon emergency personnel and others will check their emergency sources again and only consult the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center for future tsunami bulletins. We can learn and prepare by looking at the websites for both warning centers to see their areas of responsibility, their previous bulletins/messages for June 14, and other tsunami information. When an emergency happens, it is also essential that we carefully read emergency messages to verify that they pertain to us."
The 14 June 2005 Tsunami Warning: July 12 Letter to the Lincoln County Commissioners with Concerns about the County's Preparation for Tsunamis by Range Bayer (31 pages). (It is not planned to re-format this letter to make it available online. It shares many of the same concerns as the letter to the City of Newport below, but it also included concerns about the need to prepare for the predictable jamming of 911 telephone lines during a tsunami warning. It also had an example of the tsunami evacuation map for Waldport in black and white to show that black and white reproduction would be suitable and be less costly than color reproduction and email correspondence with Jim Hawley. Because people with limited mobility are particularly at risk to tsunamis and many of them would not be able to evacuate in time before a tsunami after a major local earthquake, I also had material suggesting that a Lincoln County ordinance be enacted to restrict construction of facilities for incapacitated people in Lincoln County tsunami inundation zones because there is currently no State of Oregon restriction on construction of these facilities in a tsunami inundation zone other than a NONbinding "consultation" for facilities with 50 or more incapacitated residents; other counties and cities outside of Oregon have placed restrictions on construction of critical or essential facilities (which includes facilities for incapacitated people) in tsunami areas, so Lincoln County could, too.)
The 14 June 2005 Tsunami Warning: July 19 Letter to the Newport Mayor and City Councilors with Concerns about the City's Preparation for Tsunamis by Range Bayer (109K plus images of 3K, 4K, and 54K; 24 pages). The concerns include:
1) The City of Newport Needs to Put Up More Readable Tsunami Signs in Useful Locations
2) Create a Plan for Traffic and People Control Before and After Tsunami Waves
3) Prepare Fire and Police Departments by Determining Relevant Sources of Emergency Tsunami Information Because This Will Be an Ongoing Issue
4) Create a Plan for Evacuation of People with Limited Mobility
5) Re-examine Methods of Verifying a Tsunami to Determine Need for Notifying People to Evacuate
6) Re-examine the Tsunami Warning Notification Policy to Allow Evacuation of Tsunami Inundation Zones Before the First Wave Arrives
7) Re-examine Policy for Not Notifying Docks if There May Be a 5 ft Tsunami Wave
8) Encourage Local Radio Stations to Continuously Broadcast Tsunami Warning Information
9) Distribute Newport and South Beach Evacuation Maps to Residents
10) Educate Visitors to Newport and South Beach Tsunami Areas
11) Update Newport's Comprehensive Plan to Include Tsunami and Earthquake Hazards to Meet Public Safety Concerns
The 14 June 2005 Tsunami Warning: July 31 Email to the Waldport Mayor and City Councilors (17K). Waldport is not liable for the occurrence of a tsunami. But after a tsunami warning, are city officials morally and legally liable for the negligent delay of evacuation notifications until it is too late to evacuate everyone? Especially since Waldport has two retirement centers with people with reduced mobility in wheelchairs and walkers in a tsunami inundation zone? Particularly if Waldport chose to evacuate its fire trucks but not its people? For humanitarian and liability reasons, it seems prudent to start evacuation notifications when the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center issues a tsunami warning and cancel the warning after the Warning Center does so.
3 August 2005 Letter to Editor: Flaws in Waldport's Tsunami Warning System by Range Bayer. An excerpt:
"There are two flaws with Waldport's strategy of waiting to activate their sirens to see if a tsunami struck Crescent City. First, the absence of reports of a tsunami in Crescent City at 8:29 p.m. did not mean that there was no tsunami because communication glitches could have delayed reports. Also, a tsunami is more than just one wave, and the first wave is often not the largest, so the absence of a major wave at 8:29 did not mean that there might not be one later.
"In the 1964 tsunami, Crescent City was evacuated, and some people returned after the first two inconsequential waves because they thought it was another tsunami 'false alarm.' The next waves caused the mortalities. On June 14, the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center did not cancel their tsunami warning until 9:09 p.m. If verifying the absence of a tsunami that night was as simple as the absence of a tsunami in Crescent City at 8:29 p.m., the Warning Center would have cancelled their warning earlier."