I was just notified about a tsunami alert in my area. My tax dollars at work.
Sometime in the recent past the TV began broadcasting ugly alerts (in two languages) about potential weather events. I guess it's part of some federal notification system that came about because of 9/11, but I see it mostly as being some sort of CYA thing. "Why aren't we told?" the public cries and so now I get alerted whenever anything can happen.
I give this system about one more year before everyone ignores it.
Anyway, because we've now seen the horrors of tsunamis, just to keep the panic level at orange the gov't kindly informed me that it was possible that a tsunami would strike Los Angeles between 8:31 and 8:45, heading south from an earthquake up by Eureka.
We've been having earthquakes forever, but now that people have seen one create a tsunami, we're justified in freaking out "just to be safe." They said, I think, that no tsunami had been seen anywhere up or down the coast, but you can never go wrong in freaking out the population, so they let me know "one could happen."
At 8:40
!!! Tsunami Warning !!!
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We may have lost the North Pole but maybe we'll get California some day...not sure how I feel about that. Anyway, hang on to your hat.
all part of the culture of fear... doom, gloom.. We need not worry though the Republicans will save us all.
See, what bugs me so much is this:
We've had this "tsunami alert system" for years, but until the tragedy in SE Asia I don't think there was *one* alert. Now, in the guise of being "open and proactive" or some such shit and to prevent anything like that from happening here, they're acting all concerned, helpful, and caring. I call bullshit: they're just doing it to save their bacon.
Here's text from the "official" alert:
WEPA41 PAAQ 150256
TSUWCA
TO - TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM PARTICIPANTS IN
ALASKA/BRITISH COLUMBIA/WASHINGTON/OREGON/CALIFORNIA
FROM - WEST COAST AND ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
SUBJECT - TSUNAMI WARNING BULLETIN - INITIAL
BULLETIN NUMBER 1
ISSUED 06/15/2005 AT 0256 UTC
...A TSUNAMI WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE COASTAL AREAS
FROM THE CALIFORNIA-MEXICO BORDER TO THE NORTH TIP OF
VANCOUVER I.-BC. INCLUSIVE...
...A TSUNAMI WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR THE COASTAL AREAS FROM
THE NORTH TIP OF VANCOUVER I.-BC. TO SITKA-AK...
...AT THIS TIME THIS BULLETIN IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY FOR
OTHER AREAS OF ALASKA...
EARTHQUAKE DATA
PRELIMINARY MAGNITUDE - 7.4
LOCATION - 41.3N 125.7W - 90 MILES NW OF EUREKA-CA.
300 MILES NW OF SAN FRANCISCO-CA.
TIME - 1851 ADT 06/14/2005
1951 PDT 06/14/2005
0251 UTC 06/15/2005
EVALUATION
IT IS NOT KNOWN - REPEAT NOT KNOWN - IF A TSUNAMI EXISTS BUT A
TSUNAMI MAY HAVE BEEN GENERATED. THEREFORE PERSONS IN LOW
LYING COASTAL AREAS SHOULD BE ALERT TO INSTRUCTIONS FROM THEIR
LOCAL EMERGENCY OFFICIALS. PERSONS ON THE BEACH SHOULD MOVE TO
HIGHER GROUND IF IN A WARNED AREA. TSUNAMIS MAY BE A SERIES OF
WAVES WHICH COULD BE DANGEROUS FOR SEVERAL HOURS AFTER THE
INITIAL WAVE ARRIVAL.
But Voyaging's right, and I'm enjoying my slow trek up north. Can't wait to get away from the US!
Having benefitted personally from tornado warnings while living in the midwest, I see this as growing pains for the tsunami warning system. It will take a while for the system to become more regonizably useful.
I lived in the northwest for a long time, in fact, in the area that the quake hit last night and know all too well that tsunamis are a fact of life up there (the '64 Alaska quake killed people in Crescent City a devastated the downtown area to the point that they never rebuilt it).
The other thing to keep in mind is that there isn't really "local" television any longer. When I lived up there, we got more news from stations carried on cable that were based in San Francisco because the small networks up in Eureka weren't equipped to handle such emergencies quite was well.
One of the places I lived was in the "Arcata Bottoms" which was basically in the salt marsh, a scant mile from the ocean and along the bay sloughs. (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=seidel+road,+arcata,+ca&spn=0.054159,0.074329&t=k&hl=en)We were actually only about 4 feet above sea level. A warning such as last evening's, should I have seen it coming across the TV, would certainly have caused me to sit up and take notice.
Anything north of the Mendocino triple junction is at high risk for a locally generated tsunami - the native tribes still talk of the tsunamis that wiped out the villages and changed the course of the Mad River about 300 years ago. Geological records show that these major events occur every 200 years or so.
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