When the tsunami comes | The Tay

On March 5, off the coast of New Zealand, a chunk of Earth’s crust twice the size of Asia was pushed up, scraped off and slid under a similar giant mass. The sensor recorded movement and plotted the vibrations.

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Thousands of kilometers away, scientists in North America have taken their notes, standing ready to notify authorities of a possible rewrite of maps of flood waters. Hours later, the report came out: There was no risk of a tsunami this time.

Tsunamis, the displacement of water that can submerge entire coastlines, is often caused by earthquakes and landslides that are submerged by submarines. And because the large seismic fault zone is located near coastal British Columbia, the more advanced warning systems recently put in place will likely not give much time to escape for people in the tsunami path, experts say.

“Think of a backyard children’s pool,” says John Cassidy, head of seismology at Natural Resources Canada and assistant professor at Victoria University.

“You put a small piece of plywood in the water and lift it up,” he says. “But instead of a small swimming pool, we’re talking about something 1,000 kilometers long.”

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People often misunderstand a tsunami as a single large tsunami when, in fact, it is a series of waves that last for hours, Cassidy says.

Cassidy has a knack for turning mega-events into simple comparisons. This is, in some ways, the work that scientists do as they grapple with tsunamis and earthquake preparedness: providing information in digestible, understandable and most of all actionable terms for governments and the public, in terms of either immediate or long-term response. Preparedness.

Tsunami is a fact of life for people in coastal areas. Not only did the Good Friday earthquake in 1964 devastate structures and livelihoods in Anchorage, Alaska, it also triggered a tsunami that rewrote the map of Alberni and Port Alberni, British Columbia, eventually resulting in their merging into a single entity.

When the 1964 Alaska earthquake struck, Cassidy says, there was no tsunami warning system.

Today, we have the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, located in Hawaii, and the National Tsunami Warning Center, which is in Alaska. When earthquakes happen in Alaska or Japan, Cassidy says, British Columbia now has the ability to receive an advanced warning about whether or not a tsunami will reach our coasts.

These centers are operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The centers analyze earthquake and earthquake data, along with readings from tide gauges and information on sea levels, to identify threats and issue alerts.

They also use the DART system – or ‘Deep Ocean Assessment and Tsunami Recording’.

“These are deep ocean sensors,” says Summer Ullendorf, scientific officer at the National Tsunami Warning Center. “Often these are the first measurements of a wave before it reaches the coast.”

Ohlendorf and fellow scientists at the center are monitoring seismic data and sea level estimates 24 hours a day, along with its sister center in Hawaii. Two scientists are always at the center of the warning, looking for major seismic events that could trigger tsunamis.

The area covered by the National Tsunami Warning Center is huge, stretching the eastern and western coasts of Canada and the United States.

Sometimes, despite the monitoring, coastal communities won’t receive much advance warning about a tsunami. While undersea seismic activity near Japan or New Zealand provides hours of advance time to analyze data for tsunamis hitting the United States or Canada, earthquakes closer to home, as in the Cascadia Subduction region off the coast of Vancouver Island, offer little From prior notification.

“We can give people 20 minutes of warning if an earthquake strikes right off the coast,” says Ullendorf. “If you don’t have your bags packed, plan and know where to go, 20 minutes doesn’t seem like a lot of time all of a sudden.”

One of the earthquake monitoring centers in British Columbia that supplies data to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the Earthquake Early Warning System operated by Ocean Networks Canada, a nonprofit association funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation through the University of Victoria.

This early warning system was installed in June 2019, with seismic sensors placed across Vancouver Island and the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.

Map showing the seismic geo-sensors installed on Vancouver Island and the Juan de Fuca Tectonic Plate. This system may provide 60 to 90 seconds of warning before an earthquake. Image courtesy of Ocean Networks Canada.

The purpose of the system is not so much to provide general notification on a large scale as it is to protect critical infrastructure. With earthquakes in close proximity to the capital and economic centers of British Columbia, the early warning system will provide at least 60 to 90 seconds advance notice.

Benoennet Pirenne, Director of User Interaction with Ocean Networks Canada, says those seconds can be vital.

“A typical example is a Skytrain in Vancouver,” says Perini. “If you know there’s a tremor coming and you know there is about a minute of time to act, then it might be enough time to bring the train to the nearest station and not get stuck in the middle of a tunnel.”

An advance warning can also be issued to emergency services, allowing them to ensure that the car compartment doors are open in case they are broken by the vibration of the damage.

However, Perini says the tsunami studies for Ocean Networks Canada do not start and end with an immediate response. Advance planning can also be key.

The data collected by the center, NOAA, and other organizations is used to model geographic problem areas. This can guide urban planning and emergency evacuations for governments.

Scholars also learn from historical information. Native oral history says that the last time a massive tsunami struck the county was around the year 1700, wiping out entire villages on the west coast.

These accounts are further confirmed by contemporary records from Japan which identified this massive earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction until 9 pm on January 26, 1700.

After more than 300 years, scientists at Ocean Networks Canada are testing a prototype of a radar system, recently installed in Tofino, that can detect incoming waves up to 80 kilometers. Pirenne says this system could allow for instant warning in communities like Tofino and Ucluelet, providing a progression of a few short but vital minutes.

Most importantly, it can detect meteorites caused by changes in atmospheric pressure rather than landslides or earthquakes. Scientists are just beginning to understand these specific types of tsunamis and how to predict them.

All this knowledge spanning centuries at the global level contributes to minimizing the damage and loss of life caused by the tsunami waves. But in order to capitalize on the advances made by scientists, governments and the public need to prepare as well by strengthening emergency response systems, maintaining emergency response groups and developing emergency response plans, something that only 13 percent of British Columbia households are currently doing.

Tsunami is inevitable. We know that the “really big guy” is coming.

At the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, an exhibit on the 2012 tsunami shows us what’s at stake: a country transformed by an ocean roar forced by the planet’s force to descend to land.

The earthquake near New Zealand on March 5 did not cause a tsunami. It might be the next.

Our scientists will be there to watch, wait and inform us.

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