Tsunami warnings still not exact science

A friend called me at 12:38 a.m. last Friday. "Rick," he said, "do you know about the tsunami? There's been an 8.9 earthquake in Japan."

I thanked him for the call and turned on the TV to startling videos from people who experienced the quake in Japan and from people who photographed the effects of the tsunami that hit the coast of Japan. The early video of those surges showed a black mass sweeping away anything in its way.

Naturally, I wondered what that meant for me and other Puget Island residents and residents of other low lying areas along the Columbia.

Television reports soon said the Washington coast was on a "tsunami advisory" and the Oregon and California coasts were on a "tsunami warning." Waves or surges of 1-2 feet could be expected in Washington, while waves of 3-6 could hit the Oregon coast around 7:20 a.m.

What did that mean for the Columbia River?

I've seen the tsunami zone map produced by the state Department of Natural Resources. It shows the zone ending just down river of Puget Island.

I remember 1964. The Good Friday quake in Alaska sent a tsunami down the coast that knocked log rafts loose of their moorings on Deep River. There was no alert then; the water started acting weird. Along the coast, the tsunami was worse and killed 10 people. The coast is definitely more susceptible than the river.

I called our sheriff's office and learned that while Sheriff Jon Dearmore and volunteer Emergency Services Director Ron Kimmel were out of town, Undersheriff Mark Howie had been informed of the situation, and the department was monitoring the situation. Because indications were indefinite on the possible effect in our area, they said they would wait for reports from Hawaii and decide then if they needed to take steps such as using the reverse 9-1-1 system to notify people of a dangerous situation and possible need to evacuate.

Given that information, I decided that my family didn't have to evacuate yet. I posted what information I had on The Eagle's Facebook page and took a nap.

The tsunami was expected to hit Hawaii around 5 a.m. Reports started coming in over television around 5:30 a.m.

I called the sheriff's office around 6 a.m. and learned that they were using the advisory status and weren't advising people to evacuate.

I talked with Sheriff Dearmore Tuesday about the incident. He said he felt comfortable with the way the department had handled it.

He had been notified, he said, and he was in telephone contact with staff and with Sheriff Scott Johnson in Pacific County, who was closely monitoring the situation.

It takes as much as 40 minutes to implement a reverse 9-1-1 call, he said, and staff on duty were capable of doing it. He felt that if there had been need to evacuate residents of low lying areas, there would have been adequate time.

I'm not so sure about the adequate time, I said. The situation in Hawaii became clear gradually, not immediately, but around 5:40 a.m. Another 40 minutes to implement the call leaves residents a little over an hour to evacuate.

Is that plenty of time? What do I want to take? What do I need to take? Is everyone awake? What about pets? The 90-year-old neighbor across the road? The recent immigrant across the Island with poor English and only a cell phone? Will the roads be clear? Dealing with those concerns could eat up a lot of minutes.

It boils down to common sense, the sheriff commented. People need to do what they need to do.

The tsunami warning system has improved a lot since 1964. There was damage in the harbors around the Oregon-California boarders, but people knew to prepare for it.

Pacific County's emergency management office kept issuing advisories throughout the day. Aftershocks could cause other tsunamis, and the beaches and Willapa Bay weren't safe. In the late afternoon, they reported a surge 3-4 feet tall in the bay.

Overall, we dodged the bullet.

Across the ocean, the story is different.

The damage and loss of life is staggering, and this is in a nation better prepared than anywhere else for these events.

It's difficult to imagine five minutes of shaking from a subduction zone earthquake. There's a subduction zone right off the coast that quakes every 300-500 years; the last quake was 1700.

Looking at what went on in Japan with the quake, its damage, and the tremendous tsunami just 30 minutes later really makes one wonder what it will be like when it happens here.