The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration met with state officials to discuss U.S. tsunami warning capabilities and the need for better local preparedness, in light of the tsunami in March triggered by a Magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off the northeast coast of Japan.
NOAA’s National Weather Service organized the federal-state conference at the request of Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA).
“We need to make sure that all of our local state governors and their emergency management and first responder agency staff know what to do if hit with a tsunami. I hope that this meeting today will achieve that goal,” said Wolf.
Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator, pointed out that Japan is one of the best disaster-prepared nations in the world but still has been “severely challenged to respond to and recover from the devastating combination of earthquakes, tsunamis and radiation leaks.”
Read a first-person account of how a school district in Northern California responded to the recent tsunami in March.
The point of the conference was to start learning from Japan’s challenges and successes, especially as the country’s emergency preparedness plans are estimated to have saved as many as 337,000 residents.
NOAA also said the tsunami threat is often overlooked in the Atlantic basin, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, because catastrophic events in that region have been rare. However, a January 2010 earthquake off the coast of Haiti generated a 10-foot high tsunami, and nearly 2,000 people were killed in 1946 when a tsunami struck the Dominican Republic.
NOAA’s two tsunami warning centers provide around-the-clock monitoring and warning of tsunami threats for the United States and many other parts of the world. Assisting in the effort to deliver accurate tsunami forecasts is a vast network of NOAA tsunami detection buoys, which use satellite technology to transmit wave height to the warning centers as a tsunami passes, and coastal tide and water level gauges positioned near coastlines and harbors to measure waves at impact.
NOAA also launched a new Caribbean Tsunami Warning Program, which aims to increase awareness and preparedness throughout the Caribbean.
