by David Wiwchar
Ha-Shilth-Sa Reporter
February 10, 2005
In the wake of last months Tsunami in southeast Asia, the governments
of Canada and British Columbia have set aside $1,850,000 for emergency
preparedness in coastal communities.
BC is giving the Provincial Emergency Program $1 million for emergency preparedness in non-Native coastal communities, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada is contributing $500,000 to the First Nations Emergency Preparedness Program for the same service in First Nations communities, and Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada is contributing the remaining $350,000 to fund scientific research, and develop a standardized template for risk analysis research.
"Working in partnership with First Nations and with the provincial government, we are supporting the efforts of over 70 First Nation communities in British Columbia to include tsunami preparedness as part of their emergency planning," said the Honourable Andy Scott, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
According to Minister Scott, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC) will work with the Government of BC to ensure that vulnerable coastal communities in BC conduct tsunami risk assessments, prepare plans that include recommendations for communications and notification enhancement, and review best practices to deal with tsunami hazards. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) will ensure that coastal First Nations communities in BC are similarly equipped with resources and supports for tsunami preparedness.
According to Dan Murphy, General Manager for First Nations Emergency Preparedness Program (FNESS), his organization will be organizing a meeting with coastal First Nations leaders and communities at the beginning of March.
"What the tsunami in South Asia did was to really open our eyes to this danger," said Murphy, a former member of the Vancouver Fire Department, and longtime emergency services instructor at the Justice Institute of BC. "Tsunami disasters have not been a widely studied emergency, but it's something we should have been more diligent about in the past," he said.
Over the next two years, FNESS will be working with the 75 coastal First Nations communities to develop emergency preparedness and evacuation plans in the event of a tsunami, and will also help develop similar plans for other types of emergencies if the First Nations don't already have them.
"When a tsunami hits, you may get 15 or 20 minutes notice, and there's going to be property loss in the danger zones," said Murphy. "We're going to go into these high risk communities and do evacuation planning, look at evacuation routes to safe ground, and help them get themselves prepared with grab-and-go backpacks that have the essentials you need to get out safely," he said. FNESS will also help the community identify Elders and disabled people that may need to be relocated, but Murphy admits there are limitations.
All Nuu-chah-nulth communities are listed as high risk, or "Group A" according to FNESS. Many Nuu-chah-nulth communities are built alongside estuaries where rivers meet the ocean, and these low-lying communities will bear the brunt of future devastations.
Communities such as the Huu-ay-aht village of Anacla are searching for funding to move their endangered communities to higher ground, away from the effects of another deadly tsunami.
According to Huu-ay-aht Chief Councilor Robert Dennis, Anacla wasn't built when the tsunami of 1964 hit the area, pushing logs all the way past the road into Bamfield - well past the area where Anacla now sits on the banks of the Pacheena River estuary at Pacheena Bay. "If a tsunami were to hit us today, our community would be absolutely devastated," said Dennis.
"Quite a few other Nuu-chah-nulth communities would be similarly affected, which is why we need to press the governments into action on this issue immediately," he said. But according to INAC, such requests are out of the question.
"We would never consider moving communities at sea level," said INAC spokesperson Anne Thompson. "It's not about relocating communities, it's about educating people and moving people out as quickly as possible. It's about in the event of a tsunami, taking the necessary steps to ensuring people's lives are saved and how to get them to higher ground," she said. "It's all about making sure people have warning systems and evacuation plans in communities."
According to computer-assisted tsunami models, scientists have determined which west coast of Vancouver Island communities are at the highest risk. If another earthquake were to happen in the Kamchatka or Alaska region, Muchalat and Tlupana Inlets are forecast to receive the highest waves of between 4.5 and 10 metres in height, and the Alberni Inlet would be hit with 3 to 8 metre waves.
In a new PSEPC-commissioned study titled "An Assessment of the BC Tsunami Warning System and Related Risk Reduction Practices: Tsunamis and Coastal Communites in British Columbia", Drs. Peter Anderson and Gordon Gow from the Simon Fraser University Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology, say much work needs to be done to protect BC communities from tsunamis.
According to their report, the threat of tsunami along the west coast of Canada has prompted the federal government and the Province of British Columbia to participate with other members of the international community in the Pacific Tsunami Warning System (PTWS). The BC Tsunami Warning System is, in effect, a regional component of the PTWS that consists of three functional subsystems for detection, emergency management, and public response. Together these critical links establish a three-stage detection and dissemination network to alert local populations along the BC coast to the threat of a potential or imminent tsunami.
Some of their recommendations include: Consider the deployment of new communications technology where it provides identifiable enhancements to the current stage one activities; and Begin developing a warning and alerting strategy for loacl tsunamis throughout the BC coastal region, as current inundation mapping and related mitigation efforts are focused primarily on only a few selected communities on Vancouver Island.
Local warning capabilites are extremely limited in BC coastal regions. The capacity for broadcasting local warnings is extremely limited in many rural coastal areas and telephone-based notification schemes may also be problematic in small communities. There is a concern that automated telephone warnings could overload and end up shutting down local telephone systems, and neither commercial radio or marine radio broadcasts will reach everyone in remote communities.
Many scientists agree that despite technological advances in communication systems, little improvement in emergency warning systems has occurred over the past 20 years, and most communities would still depend on police cars roaming neighborhoods blasting emergency announcements through loudspeakers.
According to Alex Dubrowski, spokesperson for the Provincial Emergency Program (PEP), a tsunami alert picked up by the warning system in Alaska would then be sent to PEP, who would then contact INAC officials, who would them call people living in remote First Nations communities such as Kyuquot, Nuchatlaht, Anacla and others. "We work closely with INAC to ensure the information gets to the community quickly," he said.
The study concludes there is no 'one-size-fits-all' approach, and each communities needs should be assessed individually to determine the best warning system and evacuation approach.
"Communication is a major issue, and we need to improve those systems because they are less than acceptable right now," said Murphy. "We need to find the most effective technologies and identify community contacts. INAC has the band office phone number, but what happens after 5 o'clock? These are some of the issues we'll be looking at," he said.
The US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deployed a six-buoy tsunami warning system in 1998, placing three near Alaska, two close to Oregon and Washington state, and one near the equator. Two of the three buoys near Alaska are not working, and one of the two West Coast buoys is not transmitting data, according to a report on FCW.com.
The Aleutian Islands and the Pacific Northwest are near active underwater tsunami-generating seismic faults called subduction zones, in which one tectonic plate is sucked underneath another. The Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami that killed more than 350,000 in Southeast Asia happened after a subduction zone earthquake occurred near Sumatra.
A 9.2 Richter-scale earthquake in the Aleutian subduction zone in 1964 caused a tsunami responsible for killing more than 120 people. In 1946, an earthquake originating in the same seismic area sent a tsunami to Hawaii, killing more than 150. An approaching tsunami sounds like "a freight train coming in from the coast," said Harold Mofjeld, a NOAA tsunami researcher. But tsunamis are caused not just by earthquakes, but also by underwater volcano eruptions, and landslides both underwater and on land.
A buoy system adequate to monitor the entire Pacific basin should include at least 21 working buoys, said Frank Gonzalez, a NOAA oceanographer. "It's kind of laughable to talk in terms of six gauges," he said. "There's room for a tsunami to sneak through."
Canada does not participate in the buoy program, as it depends on the US system for its own tsunami defense.
Tidal gauges along the coast (including Tofino) are the final line of warning defense, but data from the gauges is of limited value. "They're meant to measure tides, not tsunamis," Gonzalez said. "They're inside of protected harbours." The best measurement is the buoys "out in the middle of the ocean, between that earthquake and you." The current network of six buoys provides minimal but sufficient coverage of America's Pacific coast, he said, adding "obviously, anything could be improved," he said.
Even the best warning system could be useless in the short time span in which tsunamis can occur. Local tsunamis, such as a wave generated by the subduction zone in the Pacific Northwest or in the Caribbean, crash into land within minutes, not hours.
"You may have 20 to 30 minutes from the time the earthquake appears until the first wave comes in," said David Oppenheimer, a US Geological Survey seismologist involved in tsunami monitoring. "Even if you had a warning confirmed by the buoys, it's so little time."
But the warning system in place is not adequate, he said. "The method of evacuating people is somehow getting the word out, police cruisers with speakers," Oppenheimer said. "That's not going to work in a local tsunami."
If a tsunami was detected on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the public would be advised through various agencies and organizations including: Coast Guard, RCMP, Provincial Emergency Program, large employers, local radio and television stations, and tsunami warning systems in the few locations that have them. Most agencies involved in these types of emergencies are geared towards dealing with the after-effects, not early warning.
The bottom line is
greater public awareness of tsunamis. "If you feel an earthquake
and it lasts more than 20 seconds, get to high ground," said Guy
Urban, a geophysicist with the tsunami warning center in Alaska.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright Ha-Shilth-Sa Newspaper,
published by the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council. Reproduction of this article
or photographs, in whole or in part, is illegal without the written consent
of Ha-Shilth-Sa Newspaper (hashilth@nuuchahnulth.org)
home
> habitat
> article
