Residents across Northern California’s coast were told to quickly evacuate Thursday morning and urged to seek higher ground after a magnitude 7 earthquake off the coast of Humboldt County prompted a tsunami warning.
The alert just before 11 a.m. warned that “a tsunami with damaging waves and powerful current is possible.”
But about an hour later, the alert was canceled.
It felt to some like emergency whiplash. Others were left confused.
But officials say that they followed the correct protocol to respond to a potentially dangerous tsunami and that it was necessary to provide residents adequate time to reach safety.
“Time has to be respected to get people safe,” said Dave Snider, the tsunami warning coordinator at the National Tsunami Warning Center in Alaska.
“The No. 1 challenge with tsunamis is we know a large event has happened,” Snider said of the earthquake. “We don’t know if a tsunami is actually occurring.”
Given the size and location of the earthquake, his team immediately kicked into action their procedures for a potential tsunami, and the first step is to issue as targeted a warning as possible.
Earthquake leaves Northern California with ‘emergency whiplash’
Tens of thousands of Northern Californians had a harrowing morning on Thursday, which may be putting it mildly.
First came the rattling from a magnitude 7 underwater earthquake off the coast of Humboldt County just before 10:45 a.m. The powerful temblor caused power outages and broke water lines in some communities, plus knocked plenty of products off store shelves. But no major injuries or damage were reported as of yesterday afternoon.
Soon after the initial shaking, residents’ cellphones began their own rattling, blaring a warning: There was now the threat of a tsunami along a wide stretch of the Pacific Coast — from northern Santa Cruz County and extending well into Oregon.
Over roughly the next hour, government agencies were busy alerting residents to seek higher ground. Firefighters ordered Bay Area beachgoers to evacuate. The San Francisco Zoo was evacuated and closed. Train service through an underwater tunnel was shut down. Boat owners scrambled to get their vessels out of the harbor.
Then about an hour later, the National Weather Service had an update: The warning was canceled as “no tsunami danger presently exists” along the coastline.
That left some feeling what my colleagues Grace Toohey and Hannah Wiley described as “emergency whiplash,” mixed with confusion.
“But officials say that they followed the correct protocol to respond to a potentially dangerous tsunami and that it was necessary to provide residents adequate time to reach safety,” they reported.
Some in the initial warning zone told The Times that community members didn’t know what they were supposed to do.
The general guidance from the weather service: “Move to high ground or inland (away from the water).”
Thursday morning’s quake was felt throughout the North and Central coasts and as far away as Sacramento, Reno and southern Oregon. It was followed by multiple aftershocks.
Olivia Cobian runs a bed-and-breakfast in the historic town of Ferndale and told Times reporters the nearly 130-year-old building “looked like a war zone.”
“Claw tubs that had been lifted off [their mounts] and scooched over,” she said. “This is crazy.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a state of emergency for Del Norte, Humboldt and Mendocino counties to “allow more resources to go where needed for emergency response to this morning’s earthquake.”
Yesterday’s quake and the unnerving hour that followed is a good reminder that there are things we can all do to be a little more prepared — no matter where you are in the Golden State.
