VANCOUVER—Sirens and officials banging on doors roused people from their sleep in the middle of the night Tuesday in British Columbia as a tsunami warning was issued along a large swath of the province’s coastline after a powerful earthquake off Alaska’s coast. The warning was lifted about three hours later, ending a tense period for some as they made their way to safety on higher ground. “I just heard the fire trucks going around, honking their horns and on the loud speaker saying there is a tsunami warning,” said Gillian Der, a University of British Columbia geography student who is studying in Queen Charlotte on Haida Gwaii. “It was very apocalyptic. So I was just running up the street to the muster station, up the big hill.” Josie Osborne, the mayor of Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island, was ready in a few minutes to leave her home after getting a warning text but said she pondered what shoes to wear in case she wouldn’t ever be back. When the warning was lifted it “was a great sense of relief. You prepare for the worst and you hope for the best and that’s what happened,” she said.
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The quake with a magnitude of 7.9 struck at about 1:30 a.m. Pacific time. It was centred 278 kilometres southeast of Kodiak in the Gulf of Alaska at a depth of about 10 kilometres.
Jan Knutson, left, and her husband Ed Hutchinson, centre, and a man at about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday wait for the all-clear at Homer High School during a tsunami alert for Homer, Alaska. The quake struck 278 kilometres southeast of Kodiak at a depth of about 10 kilometres. ( Michael Armstrong / The Associated Press )
Earth sciences Prof. Brent Ward of Simon Fraser University said the tremblor didn’t produce a tsunami because it was a strike-slip earthquake, where the plates slip sideways past each other. “To get a tsunami, you have to have vertical movement of the sea floor and that more often occurs in what we call a thrust fault ... where one of the plates is moving over top of the other.”
Ward said when a plate moves up very quickly, that displaces the water above it, setting off a tsunami. “It looks as though this earthquake was triggered on what we would call a transcurrent fault in the oceanic plate that is going underneath North America,” he said.
Tsunami travel times as illustrated by the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center. ( NWS Tsunami Alerts / Twitter )
The U.S. Geological Survey said dozens of aftershocks have been recorded ranging in magnitude from 3.3 to 6.9. It says large earthquakes are common in the region and over the previous century 11 other quakes of magnitude seven or greater have occurred within 600 kilometres of Tuesday’s event. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said several B.C. communities activated their emergency plans and evacuated those at risk as the provincial emergency co-ordination centre and five regional operations centres were also mobilized. In low-lying areas of Victoria and Esquimalt, officials went door-to-door telling people to evacuate, while elsewhere sirens and text alerts were used to get the warning out, he said in an interview. An alert was still in place hours after the initial warning, which means there may be higher wave action in low-lying areas along the coast, Farnworth said.
This screenshot shows alerts for a tsunami watch early Tuesday after the earthquake prompted a tsunami warning for a large swath of Alaska's coast. Officials cancelled the warning after a few tense hours after waves failed to show up in coastal Alaska communities. ( The Associated Press )
“Although the tsunami warning was eventually suspended, this event demonstrates that coast warning systems do work.” Patricia Leidl, communications director with Emergency Preparedness BC, said there was a three centimetre wave and a 15 centimetre rise in sea level hours after the quake at Tofino. The tsunami warning covered B.C.’s north coast, Haida Gwaii, the west coast of Vancouver Island, the central coast and northeast Vancouver Island, and along the Juan de Fuca Strait. The last devastating tsunami to hit B.C. was 54 years ago in Port Alberni after a 9.2 earthquake off Alaska. Two waves gathered force as they raced up the funnel-like Alberni Inlet in March 1964, hitting the city with forces that swept away houses and vehicles, but caused no deaths.
The Alaska Earthquake Information Center said the quake was felt widely in several communities on the Kenai Peninsula and throughout southern Alaska. ( Michael Armstrong / The Associated Press )
Scientists in Japan, and Vancouver Island First Nations, have gathered accounts of a huge earthquake and tsunami in January 1700 that wiped out communities and killed thousands of people. A wave the height of a four-storey building hit the east coast of Japan nine hours after the original earthquake off the B.C. coast. People in Alaska received warnings Tuesday from the National Weather Service sent to cellphones that said: “Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland.” The fire chief of a city in Alaska that is popular with cruise ships said there was no panic as residents reacted to the tsunami warning. Seward fire Chief Eddie Athey praised his community for doing “the right thing,” calling it “a controlled evacuation” as people left for higher ground or drove along the only road out of the city.
RECAP: B.C., Alaska under tsunami warning early Tuesday
Athey told the Associated Press the quake was gentle, and that it “felt like the washer was off balance.” The quake lasted for up to 90 seconds, long enough that he thought, “Boy, I hope this stops soon because it’s just getting worse.” The Alaska Earthquake Information Center said the quake was felt widely in several communities on the Kenai Peninsula and throughout southern Alaska, but it also had no immediate reports of damage. People reported on social media that the quake was felt hundreds of kilometres away, in Anchorage.
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Tuesday’s short-lived tsunami warning was the closest thing to an emergency response practice without actually being a practice for many B.C. coastal communities.
A tsunami warning for the coastal areas of B.C. has been cancelled after a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Alaska. The warning was issued early Tuesday, shortly after 1:30 a.m. However, at 4:30 a.m., an urgent message from Emergency Management B.C. said all warnings for coastal B.C. had been cancelled.
“We were fortunate … in that it wasn’t a tsunami-producing earthquake, but they didn’t know that when the earthquake occurred,” said Simon Fraser University’s John Clague of the many coastal residents who were awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of a siren blaring and responded accordingly. “You have to assume that any earthquake of that size beneath the ocean can produce a tsunami.”
The earth-sciences professor and quake expert said the event was, in the end, “a very useful exercise” for communities and local and provincial governments to ensure action was timely and responses went according to established emergency plans.
“It seemed like there was an appropriate response at the community level,” said Clague. “It was a far better response than the last incident after the Haida Gwaii earthquake.”
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In October 2012, a magnitude 7.8 quake hit near Haida Gwaii, its epicentre at Moresby Island. It’s among the largest temblors recorded in Canada. During that event, B.C. officials were criticized for the delayed response and breakdown in communication with some coastal communities.
“A lot of the communities felt that they were just not properly notified and I don’t think you’re hearing that response from local communities now, so I think we’ve learned something, but we still have a long ways to go,” he said.
Port Alberni Mayor Mike Ruttan said his staff and local residents responded as expected in a situation like a possible tsunami.
“I was really proud of the way people responded. When the alarms went off, literally thousands of people got themselves organized and out the door and headed for high ground and safety,” said Ruttan. “Those that had the grab-and-go bags — grabbed them and away they went.”
Ruttan acknowledged there is still room for improvement in terms of communication and that there has been serious consideration into buying technology that allows local authorities to send out a warning text message to all smartphone devices within a specific radius, such as what’s available over in Ucluelet.
“In a situation like this, it can be quite useful,” he said.
Tofino Mayor Josie Osborne said early Tuesday she was amazed at how well residents mobilized to get to the evacuation centre. Just after the quake hit, she got a text alert and heard the beach sirens, which Osborne said sounded within five minutes of the tsunami warning.
“Everything was so smooth. So many people at the evacuation centre said that the first thing they heard was the sirens,” she said.
Good to see more and more people here at @TofinoEmergency muster centre. Goal is 100% of town AND GUESTS. Spread the word and follow the evacuation routes, first wave is due at 03:40! #Tofino #Tsunami pic.twitter.com/fTcF03KsNA — Catherine Lempke (@Cat_Lempke) January 23, 2018
She said the centre was packed with up to 400 people, most of whom were either visiting Tofino, which is one of B.C.’s most popular tourist destinations, or residents living near the beach.
“Everyone was so calm,” she said. “The staff at the resorts went into high gear and people got into their cars and came into town. There were a lot of tourists and residents, and dozens of dogs, which was nice to see.”
The last tsunami warning in Tofino was five years ago, and Osborne said they have learned a lot since then. Tofino now performs tsunami drills once a year, and monthly emergency-preparedness events, like taking residents on “high-ground hikes,” to show them where they need to get to to escape a tsunami.
She said after the alert came in that the tsunami warning had been cancelled, people cheered and everyone went home.
Mike Farnworth, B.C.’s minister of public safety, issued a statement early Tuesday, noting that the event “demonstrates that coast warning systems do work.”
“Overnight, several communities along the coast activated their emergency plans and evacuated those at risk,” the statement read.
“Emergency Management B.C. activated the Provincial Emergency Co-ordination Centre, and five provincial regional operations centres. The agency also supported local governments to evacuate residents.”
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–With files from Tiffany Crawford and The Canadian Press
Here’s how B.C.’s emergency system works:
• The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Centre monitors for possible tsunami threats.
• If a possible threat is identified, the centre will notify Emergency Management B.C. immediately.
• The EMBC, which is a provincial agency, then activates the Provincial Emergency Notification System that forwards information to local communities and agencies on the alert level for each of B.C.’s five tsunami zones.
• Local emergency plans are then implemented by each municipality or area as required.
• In communities where a tsunami is expected, local authorities may notify residents of an emergency through the use of an outdoor siren, while others may employ a phone fan-out, door-to-door or loud-hailer system. Residents should then listen to their radio for updates.
• Meanwhile, emergency warnings are broadcast by TV, radio, phone, text message, door-to-door contact, social media, weather radios or outdoor sirens.
How can I get instant updates about possible emergency situations?
• The U.S. Tsunami Warning System uses its Twitter feed to share tsunami info statements on events registering above magnitude 6.5, regardless of whether a tsunami warning has been issued or not. Cellphone users can subscribe to receive these info statements by texting ‘follow NWS_NTWC’ to 40404. The same information can also be subscribed to via email.
• Other Twitter accounts you can follow for updates in case of an emergency include Emergency Info B.C., Earthquakes Canada and the U.S. Geological Survey.
• The provincial government is also developing a text-message-based system called AlertReady that will automatically send an alert to all cellphone users in a certain area, regardless of whether you’re subscribed to the alerts or not, in the case of a large-scale emergency. That system is expected to be ready in the spring.
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The Canadian Press
Sirens and officials banging on doors roused people from their sleep in the middle of the night Tuesday in British Columbia as a tsunami warning was issued along a large swath of the province's coastline after a powerful earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska.
The warning was lifted about three hours later, ending a tense period for some as they made their way to safety on higher ground.
“I just heard the fire trucks going around, honking their horns and on the loud speaker saying there is a tsunami warning,” said Gillian Der, a University of British Columbia geography student who is studying in Queen Charlotte on Haida Gwaii. “It was very apocalyptic. So I was just running up the street to the muster station, up the big hill.”
Tofino Mayor Josie Osborne was ready in a few minutes to leave her home on the west coast of Vancouver Island after getting a warning text but said she pondered what shoes to wear in case she wouldn't ever be back.
When the warning was lifted it “was a great sense of relief. You prepare for the worst and you hope for the best and that's what happened,” she said.
The quake with a magnitude of 7.9 struck at about 1:30 a.m. Pacific time. It was centred 278 kilometres southeast of Kodiak, Alaska, at a depth of about 10 kilometres.
Earth sciences Prof. Brent Ward of Simon Fraser University said it didn't produce a tsunami because it was a strike-slip earthquake, where the plates slip sideways past each other.
“To get a tsunami, you have to have vertical movement of the sea floor and that more often occurs in what we call a thrust fault ... where one of the plates is moving over top of the other.”
Ward said when a plate moves up very quickly, that displaces the water above it, setting off a tsunami.
“It looks as though this earthquake was triggered on what we would call a transcurrent fault in the oceanic plate that is going underneath North America,” he said.
Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said several B.C. communities activated their emergency plans and evacuated those at risk as the provincial emergency co-ordination centre and five regional operations centres were also mobilized.
More: Why didn't tsunami strike Vancouver Island? Q&A with seismic expert
In low-lying areas of Victoria and Esquimalt, officials went door-to-door telling people to evacuate, while elsewhere sirens and text alerts were used to get the warning out, he said in an interview.
“Although the tsunami warning was eventually suspended, this event demonstrates that coast warning systems do work.”
Emergency Preparedness BC said there was a three centimetre wave and a 15 centimetre rise in sea level hours after the quake at Tofino.
Faye Kennington said she woke up at around 3 a.m. to a sound that she thought might be her hair dryer or refrigerator on its last legs. But when she checked her phone, she saw a number of alerts and realized a tsunami warning was underway.
“I grabbed my stuff, woke up all my family, we jumped in the car and went to high ground,” she said. “It was panic. It was scary.”
Kennington, who operates the Coast and Toast B&B in Ucluelet, drove to the local high school where residents were gathered and began calling friends who might not have woken up.
#Tsunami Warning previously issued for coastal areas of #BC has been CANCELLED. Continue to listen to instructions from local officials until the ALL CLEAR has been issued in your community. — Emergency Info BC (@EmergencyInfoBC) January 23, 2018
She said there are a lot of excellent volunteers in Ucluelet who help during emergencies, but the warning system could be stronger.
“Our siren is not really loud enough to wake everybody up, so we need multiple systems to make sure people don't fall through the cracks,” she said.
Kennington said she has an emergency bag prepared that includes food, a first aid kit, cash and passports. After this experience, she's planning to add a dog leash and some toothbrushes.
“Sitting there at the school at four o'clock in the morning not having brushed my teeth made me realize I really do like to brush my teeth,” she said. “Maybe a pack of gum won't hurt either.”
Other Ucluelet residents woke up to police officers or firefighters banging on their doors. Gary Bostrom, who has lived in the coastal community for 30 years and lived through many false alarms, said he heard the knocking at 4 a.m. and reluctantly began trudging up the hill to the school.
There was bumper-to-bumper traffic and cars parked everywhere, he said. By the time he arrived at the school at 4:45 a.m., the warning had been cancelled and exhausted-looking people were flooding out of the building toward their vehicles.
“It was like 'Night of the Living Dead,' ” he said with a chuckle.
In nearby Tofino, some residents also questioned whether to take the alarm seriously. Nick Jacquet said he was sound asleep at 2:30 a.m. when he was rudely awakened by the siren. He's been through at least four warnings before and doesn't usually go to higher ground, he said.
“I wasn't scared. I was just feeling bothered,” he said. “It was sort of like, 'Oh gosh, do I have to do this?' ”
But when the sirens continued, he grabbed his dog and a blanket, drove to the top of a hill and tried to sleep until the warning was cancelled.
Jacquet, who owns the Tofino Travellers Guesthouse, said he knows people who stayed at home the whole time. Officials are going to have to deal with the fact that residents may not take future warnings seriously, given that the last few have been false alarms, he said.
“You get woken up at two o'clock in the morning from an alarm system. Do you do anything about it?” he asked.
“You're in a great sleep. You maybe ordered sangria and they're bringing that to your little chair on the beach. What would you do? Stay with that one, or get up and throw your clothes on and get outside and go to the safe spot?”
- With files from Laura Kane.
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