The 14 June 2005 Tsunami Warning: Email to City of Waldport with Concerns

The 14 June 2005 Tsunami Warning: July 31 Email to the Waldport Mayor and City Councilors with Concerns about Waldport's Delay After a Tsunami Warning

Placed on Internet: 31 July 2005. Links last checked: 31 July 2005.

by Range Bayer, citizen of Lincoln County, Oregon. This email has been re-formatted for better onscreen viewing, but the content has not been changed. I have added boldface here that was not possible in my plain text email. I used the email addresses provided by Waldport for contacting the Mayor and City Councilors at http://www.waldport.org/council/city_councilor.htm

Date: 31 July 2005

To: Mayor Scott Beckstead, City Council President Herman Welch, City Councilors Mark Campbell, Charles Church, Shirley Hanes, Peter Kelly, Susan Woodruff

From: Range (Richard) Bayer, P.O. Box 1467, Newport, OR 97365

Subject: Liability of City of Waldport After a Tsunami Warning?

Dear Mayor and Councilors:

Waldport is clearly not liable for the occurrence of a tsunami. But wouldn't Waldport officials be liable after receiving a tsunami warning and delaying notification of people to evacuate until there is not enough time left to do so? Especially, if like June 14, Waldport officials quickly evacuated its fire trucks but not its people (Eberly 2005, Gallob 2005c)? Waldport officials know that they have seniors who would take time to evacuate, and Waldport officials' explanation for not sounding its sirens on June 14 because they were waiting for a tsunami to hit elsewhere before notifying people to evacuate (Gallob 2005c) may not convince a jury.

On June 14, the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Alaska issued the tsunami warning for the West Coast at 7:56 PM. They predicted that the first tsunami wave would arrive at Charleston at 8:44 PM and at Seaside at 9:26 PM. Based on straight line distances between these cities and Waldport, the first tsunami wave could have arrived in Waldport at about 9 PM. The Waldport fire district was notified just after 8 PM and evacuated their fire equipment within 12 minutes (Eberly 2005). Captain Anthony Mooney of the Waldport fire district reportedly said (Eberly 2005):

Neither of our sirens were activated, as it wasn't a full-blown alert. It was just a warning, so we evacuated all of our equipment and set up a command post at the elementary school.

However, there is no tsunami "alert"; a tsunami warning is the cue to evacuate. In Lincoln County, local fire departments are responsible for evacuation of their areas (Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Jim Hawley in Casteel 2005), so it is the Waldport Fire Department's responsibility to start evacuation notifications in Waldport's tsunami inundation zone after receiving a tsunami warning.

On June 14, if Waldport had activated their sirens at 8:15, people would have had 45 minutes to evacuate. This would probably have been enough time for able-bodied people who heard the sirens to evacuate from the tsunami inundation zone. But Waldport also has two major retirement centers in tsunami areas (Mayor Beckstead in Gallob 2005a). Fatalities from a tsunami are proportionately greatest for people unable to move quickly because they may not be able to evacuate in time (e.g., Dudley and Lee 1998:255-256, Bryant 2001:166). Preuss (1988:139) notes that evacuating retirement and nursing homes in a tsunami inundation area is difficult because:

Occupants often have limited mobility and therefore, require heavy manpower commitment for evacuation. For a local event, evacuation may not be possible.

The grimness of the situation for people who are not able-bodied is candidly stated in the tsunami evacuation map for Waldport by Oregon Dept. of Geology and Mineral Industries (2005) [boldface added]:

If you need help evacuating, tie something WHITE (sheet or towel) to the front door knob. Make it large enough to be visible from the street. If the emergency is a distant tsunami, then help may arrive. In the event of a local earthquake and tsunami, it is unlikely that anyone will help you, so make a plan and be prepared!

In addition, the American Planning Association's Schwab (2004) writes:

The more troublesome aspect of evacuation usually involves more vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and disabled, which local authorities must be trained to identify and move safely.

Waldport appears to be working on a plan for trying to evacuate those that are unable to do so, but statements by Herman Welch (2000), Chairman of the Waldport City Council Safety Committee, indicates that there may not be enough time to do so [boldface added]:

I have led the effort for tsunami warning and preparedness on the Waldport City Council and personally walked each of the evacuation routes and determined that a person in average physical condition can walk at a steady pace to high ground safety from the vulnerable flood plan areas of Waldport in under 20 minutes, which is the approximate minimum evacuation time if an earthquake should occur on the Cascadia Fault off the central Oregon coast. Chief Bill Grimm of the Central Oregon Coast Fire District has developed a specific plan for rescue and evaluation for those persons unable to travel to high ground due to age or disability. The actual time available for a tsunami evacuation would be the limiting factor as to what could be done under the circumstances.

Waldport's draft tsunami evacuation plan also recognized that it might not be possible to evacuate people with reduced mobility as it only (Anonymous 2001):

... asks the fire district to evacuate disabled persons to the extent possible ...

The concern with evacuating people with impaired mobility in Waldport was continuing in March 2005 (Gallob 2005b) [boldface added]:

The Waldport City Council met Monday with county, school, fire and law enforcement officials and began to piece together an agenda of preparations for the tsunami and coastal earthquake geologists say will someday hit the coast. With its downtown core, city hall, fire, medical and senior facilities, two of its three schools and much of its population in a tsunami zone, Waldport is the city most vulnerable in this county to a series of tidal waves. Facing this reality, Mayor Scott Beckstead called the meeting with a hope of generating a "to do list" the city and other entities could work on. Not all issues were dealt with successfully. Councilman Herman Welch asked, at the start of the session, who will collect the bodies, and where they will go for sanitary burial. That remained open at the end of the meeting. So, too, was the question of how to get seniors out of the town's senior apartments and up to high ground, when many use wheelchairs or walkers.

For the June 14 event not even the sirens were activated (Eberly 2005, Gallob 2005c), so Waldport retirement centers were apparently not notified and their evacuation probably had not even started. To have a chance to evacuate in time, people with limited mobility need to be notified promptly, especially if the first tsunami wave is expected within an hour like on June 14.

Councilor Herman Welch was reported as saying that there was no need to activate Waldport's tsunami sirens during the June 14 tsunami warning because Crescent City did not have a tsunami (Gallob 2005c). There are two flaws with this strategy. First, the absence of reports of a tsunami in Crescent City at 8:29 PM did not mean that there was no tsunami because communication glitches (which seemed to be common that night) 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 (Lander et al. 1993:102-103). On June 14, the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center did not cancel their tsunami warning until 9:09 PM. If verifying the absence of a tsunami that night was as simple as the absence of a tsunami at Crescent City at 8:29 PM, the Warning Center would have cancelled their warning earlier.

The second flaw with Waldport's strategy of waiting for a report of a tsunami hitting Crescent City is that there would not have been enough time to activate the sirens and to evacuate everyone, including people with reduced mobility, before the first wave would have struck Waldport at about 9 PM.

For humanitarian and liability reasons, it seems prudent for Waldport to start evacuation notifications when the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center issues a tsunami warning and cancel the warning after the Warning Center does so. The Tsunami Warning Center has considerably more expertise about tsunamis and more communication links about the presence or absence of a tsunami than Waldport. They also do not issue a tsunami warning without a good reason--they base it on the basis of the magnitude and location of an earthquake and are striving to reduce issuing tsunami warnings for tsunamis that do not materialize or that are insignificant (i.e., "false alarms")(http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/message.shtml). Prior to June 14, they have only issued two tsunami warnings for the Oregon Coast since 1980 (1986 and 1994), so they do so uncommonly.

Waldport is certainly not liable for the occurrence of a tsunami. But after a tsunami warning, are you not morally and legally liable for the negligent delay of evacuation notifications until it is too late to evacuate everyone?

Thank you for your time and consideration of these difficult public safety issues.

Yours,

Range Bayer http://www.orednet.org/~rbayer/tsunami [all lower case letters]

cc: City Administrator Nancy Leonard, Joel Gallob of Newport News-Times

REFERENCES CITED

Anonymous. 2001. Waldport to seek approval for proposed tsunami evacuation plan. July 11 article in Newport News-Times (newspaper). This is at http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2001/07/11/general/news-07.txt

Bryant, E. 2001. Tsunami: the underrated hazard. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, England.

Casteel, E. 2005. County responds to warning. P. A10 June 22 article in News Guard (Lincoln City) that is available at http://www.thenewsguard.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=2662

Dudley, W. C. and M. Lee. 1998. Tsunami! Second edition. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, Hawaii. (This is GC222.H3 D84 at Oregon State University Libraries.)

Eberly, L. 2005. Waldport area evacuation 'orderly and calm.' P. A2 article in June 17 Newport News-Times (newspaper). This is at http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2005/06/17/news/news07.txt

Gallob, J. 2005a. Hooley gathers ideas for federal tsunami response. P. A3 in Jan. 19 Newport News-Times (newspaper). This is at http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2005/01/19/news/news09.txt

Gallob, J. 2005b. Waldport looks at improving tsunami readiness. P. A1 and A4 article in March 16 Newport News-Times (newspaper). This is at http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2005/03/16/news/news05.txt

Gallob, J. 2005c. Tsunami system put to the test in Waldport. P. A7 article in July 27 Newport News-Times (newspaper). This is at http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2005/07/27/news/news16.txt

Lander, J. F., P. A. Lockridge, and M. J. Kozuch. 1993. Tsunamis affecting the West Coast of the United States, 1806-1992. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, National Geophysical Data Center. Boulder, Colorado. NGDC Key to Geophysical Records Documentation No. 29. (This is at GC222.U6 L36 1993 at Oregon State University Libraries.)

Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI). [2005]. Tsunami evacuation maps for some Oregon coastal communities. The 18 maps are not dated and are available on 4 April 2005 at http://www.oregongeology.com/earthquakes/Coastal/Tsubrochures.htm

Preuss, J. (project manager). 1988. Planning for risk: comprehensive planning for tsunami hazard areas. Prepared by Urban Regional Research for the National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C.

Schwab, J. 2004. Planning lessons from the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. American Planning Association. This is at http://www.planning.org/features/2004/tsunami.htm

Welch, H. 2000. Opinion: response to tsunami planning editorial. In July 19 article in Newport News-Times (newspaper). This is at http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2000/07/19/opinion/opinion-05.txt

Email comments to Range Bayer, Home Page, P. O. Box 1467, Newport, Oregon 97365 USA.

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