At 19:50 hours (7:50pm) pacific time today, 300 miles northwest of San Francisco, a 7.0 earthquake occured. The following aftershocks triggered a Tsunami Alert for the entire western seaboard by the US Geological Society.
Luckily, the quake was a horizontal slip event, not vertical. Once this was discovered, the Alert was cancelled. (Only a vertical slip-event quake causes a “Tsunami” wave)
Of course, our call center was off the hook w/people calling in to find out what was going on. We were just moments away from going to full mobilization before the Alert was cancelled.
We are still here! (for now anyway)
I was working in Jackson Square many years ago when the financial district Civil Defense siren (we call them tornado sirens in the midwest) went off. The only danger I could think of was San Francisco was being attacked from the sea. What form does the “Tsunami alert” take on the U.S. West Coast?
Surprsingly enough, I didn’t hear about the tsunami alert until I arrived at work this morning. I think there might be a bug in the system…unless they purposely didn’t tell Southern California….
Jeff – They still have those but they would only activate in the event of an actual evacuation. They would also activate the Emergency Broadcast System.
Greg – Southern Cali would not have been hit so I guess they figured they didn’t need to put it out even though the alert covered all of California coast.