Tsunami warning system stumbled after ocean quake  

10:03 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 15, 2005

From KING5.com and Wire Reports

SEATTLE – One of the major ways of alerting Washington coastal residents to a tsunami - the NOAA weather and hazard alert radio - failed during the West Coast warning Tuesday night.

The meteorologist in charge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office in Seattle, Chris Hill, says the warning didn't get out because a phone line was out between the office and the Coast Guard.

The AHAB, or All Hazards Alert and Broadcasting System, is new and, until Tuesday night, untested in a real emergency. The missing codes were just one problem.

A tsunami warning goes first to the national Weather Service office in Seattle. But a malfunctioning phone line in Seattle kept the signal from ever reaching the AHAB warning sirens.

The warning also never reached NOAA Weather Radios inside people's homes, and at fire and police departments.

"Certainly, when there's any failure in a system that's this critical like a warning system. We're going to take a close look at it," said the National Weather Service's Brad Coleman.

In LaPush, Police Chief Bill Lyon said that when the warning siren failed to go off automatically, he activated it by hand. He says officers and firefighters evacuated more than 600 residents to higher ground.

Neah Bay Police Chief T.J. Green says a recently installed tsunami siren did not go off.

Many people wondered what was going on. Gray Harbor 911 Director Peggy Fouts says the emergency dispatch center received 200 calls for information between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.

"Let's say we didn't do anything and there was a tsunami generated. We could have lost lives. So we have to be very careful when we say false alarms," said George Crawford with the State Office of Emergency Management.

The warning went out after a major earthquake that struck about 80 miles off the coast of northern California.

It was downgraded after officials determined there was no wave generated by the quake off northern California.

The 7.0-magnitude quake struck at about 7:50 p.m. Tuesday about 90 miles southwest of the coastal community of Crescent City and 300 miles northwest of San Francisco, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Scientists waited for signs that any powerful ocean waves would reach tide gauges placed up and down the West Coast, but they never came.

Evacuations went well in some places.

Clallam County Sheriff's Department evacuated low-lying areas; and Long Beach and Ocean Shores residents had been advised to head to higher ground. Any ships at sea were advised to remain at sea and any ships at shore were advised to remain there.

Despite reports to the contrary, there was a Tsunami. But it was a small one.

What did work was the fledgling system of Tsunami Warning buoys. All six U.S. buoys are now back up and running after technical problems last winter.

The buoy 300 miles off the California Coast not only picked up the earthquake, but a tiny Tsunami Wave recorded as it came on shore at Crescent City California. It was 10 inches high.

Coastal county officials did get word of the tsunami from the National Warning System or NAWAS, which sends an electronic message to local emergency management offices.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.