Warning was cancelled at 5.30am New Zealand time.
Brent
Hi Brent, how is it possible to get the warnings in time ?
Howzit Tom, There are lots of sensors in the pacific just to detect tsunamis and Hawaii is one of the centers for detecting them. If there was a tsunami on the way the warning sirens would go off big time in all the neighborhoods in Hawaii. Plus the police would go around and announce it so we can evacuate. Since the Indo tsunami they are upgrading these sensors and there will be more of them around the world soon. In Hawaii we have about a 3 hr warning if one is coming and if the siren goes off it’s time to head for high ground. Aloha,Kokua
I heard there was a warning that had been cancelled. The eta was 6:20 AM. I heard this about 6:30 in my car at sea level about 3 meters from the water. No sirens in these parts. The wierd thing is that about 2 nights ago my 11 year old son woke up and came and told me he was worried about a tsunami. Nah don’t worry mate we’d get warning if that ever happened.
Funny, didn’t hear anything about it until about 9am this morning checking the surf report online…we have sirens in town but they sure didn’t go off last night! A bit of a worry for me since I live about 1m above sea level and about 75m from the water, fortunately there’s a hill/cliff behind the house so if the siren goes off my plan is to grab the wife and take off running!
At 3.26am NZ time a strong earthquake recorded in the Tonga region.
3.40am the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre contacted NZ Civil Defense and placed local government/services on alert.
All were waiting confirmation from the above organisation that a wave train had been generated and it was a valid event, none was detected and just after 5.30am all were stood down.
There was localised .15m swell with a period of about 24mins (wow!) detected by bouys at Pago Pago & Niue, but nothing else.
In NZ Civil Defence is very careful to not “cry wolf” with stuff like this; a Tsunami Alert is a very serious thing to inflict on your community at 4am and the resultant panic, traffic accidents & chaos as people attempt to flee, and the crime & looting etc as others take advantage of vacant unlocked houses & cars.
The plan (I believe) is to not declare an emergency unless there is a validated wave-train coming our way.
thats not what i heard
paul holmes said that the radio station was contacted by hawaiii
cuz they couldnt contact civil defence
and then the radio station couldnt contact civil defense so they broadcasted the warning on the radio
some local mayors said they didnt know till after eta
many complaints about civil defence not answering there phones
civil defense didnt cry wolf cuz they were all asleep
i got a call from the uk who saw the warning on cnn
i took it very seriously bouys or not
its not exact scince and no one really seemed to know what was happening
or what to do
i took matters into my own hands filled the water bottles and dry cloths wet weather gear etc
and took my family up the hill just in case
what id like to know is just when is the right time to “panic”
when its just about to take you out according to civil defense new zealand
besides panic in gisborne isnt like panic in NewYork exactly now is it
theres only 80 odd thousand people
basicallyHistory shows us in a natural disaster its up to you to be organized and
dont rely on the government to hlep till its to late
The amount of warning given at any location will depend upon the distance from the earthquake/landslide that displaces water. It could be hours, but it could be 5 minutes.
I was on Oahu in 1994 (?) when there was a tsunami alert due to an earthquake near Japan; evacuation of the coast was ordered – everybody OUT of downtown Honolulu (that’s a lot of people!), boats out of the harbors, etc. The wave that showed up was only inches high. The arrival time of the wave was predicatable to the minute (posted on the TV news, different times for each island in the Hawaiian chain) but the size was not known until it arrives.
the appropriate time to panic
is just before you choose to die.
PANIC IS AN UNTENABLE EMOTIVE
do not panic,
stand and salute the red cross.
do not panic
water saftey
lifesaving
and rescue
DON"T PANIC!
all those who submi to the panic mode
relinquish reason.
,
As the pack leader
father figure
or responsible party of
any merit,panic is not an option.
stay alert ,respond to all intuitive
concerns,be in the flow and adapt.
all events are surviveable
survivors are truly blessed people.
we are all decended from survivors
look to your genetic memory
and walk in syncronicity.
Never panic.it’s stupid,
leave that to those
who do not wish to survive,
aloha from waipouli
…ambrose…
no ptsunami
is a good ptsunami
In 1994 I was sitting on my roof
in waipouli
down by the beach
with the phone
My friend at the fire dept.
said I should take my surfboard up with me,
if I was staying home
a 9’6’’ 3 redwood stringer
it was the quietest I had ever
experienced in my neighborhood.
more quiet than after the hurricane.
“Silly”
I assure you Civil Defence was alerted (about 3.42am) and Wellington was also alerted, all were awaiting confirmation of an actual event.
The problem was that international media (most irresponsibly the BBC) were advising of a “Tsunami” when in fact there was none yet detected. Our friends & relatives overseas were phoning us based on media mis-information warning us about somthing that wasn’t actually happening. This is what caused the panic.
And you are wrong - Tsunami confirmation IS a very exact science, if there is no wave train generated & confirmed by buoys close to the event and radiating outwards…there is no Tsunami.
At this time Civil Defence in NZ has strict protocol about how to warn people based on how close the Tsunami event is & the timeframe for arrival, working from 2hrs up to the (worst case event for us) a major underwater landslide off the coast of Chile giving us about 12 hours warning.
Cheers.
Hello Brent,
I feel strongly that everyone should have access to Tsunami information, at least via the internet, so that we can make up our own minds what to do, and not be treated like ignorant cattle by the official agencies.
Surely the risk of panic increases if warnings are given out shortly before the tsunami is due to arrive, it is better that we are informed, we have a right to the information so that we have time to prepare, and if we are confident that we will receive updates promptly then there is more opportunity to act rationally than if we get a last minute warning or none at.
If the information was publicly available, then innacurate tsunami reports would also be much less likely to occur, you are only increasing the chance of misinformation and ‘irresponsible’ reports when you withold information. If the BBC had clear information then I am sure that they would broadcast it (e.g a POSSIBILITY of a tsunami).
In my opinion it is those who withhold the tsunami information who are acting irresponsibly.
.
But others might say the more information out there - the higher the risk of mis-information.
All information was available in real-time, it was streaming live on television via CNN & BBC. All sourced from the Pacific Warning Centre.
The fact that the “alert” issued was misrepresented by the BBC television presenter into a “warning” is what caused the problem. Civil Defence in New Zealand gets on-average 17-25 such “alerts” per year - and treats every one with caution, it’s just the community never needs be bothered by them. Perhaps with this number of alerts per year we should all set our web browsers to the warning centre home page and leave our car engines running in the drive?
Hmm, I’d rather await confirmation myself.
Not if the information comes directly from the Pacific warning centre and Civil Defence. . . . how would that lead to misinformation ?
What would civil defence do if it was a real tsunami ?
If they were still unsure about it just prior to 5:30 am when they downgraded the alert, and if the tsunami had arrived at around 7:00 am as they estimated it would, then what would Civil Defence do in the hour and a half available to them ? Would it be long enough to evacuate all the small communities, farms and so on all along the East Coast ? If not, then they should pass on the information earlier.
We lived in a flood prone area one winter, and had flood warnings passed on to us by neighbouring farmers, who had some kind of remote connection to the flood alarms (I am talking about the Kaituna river) We would just keep an eye on the situation and the next high tide time, and evacuate our camp in time without panic (we generally had several hours warning). We must have had about a dozen or more alarms , and three or four real ones. It would have been very inefficient if Civil Defence had been sitting on the information until the last minute.
.
That’s the point of my argument… information was coming correctly from the source, it was mis-interpreted & sensationalised by the media…whose awake audience overseas started calling NZ friends & relatives about 3.45am onwards NZ time. This is what caused the problem. Mis-information.
If this was a genuine event here Roy, 12 sierens in various locals from Waihi Beach to Pukehina would have sounded mins after confirmation (after police/fire/army advised) if event happened 3.26am, wave train confirmed 3.45am, this would have happened before 4am.
read today’s paper…it’s all there.
What about people on islolated coastal properties ? A siren won’t do much for them. Shouldn’t they (and the rest of us) be able to receive exactly the same information that Civil defence are getting via some kind of automatic telephone or TXT service which we can subscribe to ? Relying solely on sirens and lots of human links in the information chain seems rather inefficient and outdated.
If such a service led to some uneccessary evacuations then that’s good, it’s like a fire drill, why wait until the last minute before the real thing ?
.
Howzit Tom, Do the remote coastal areas have police in there areas, if so I think they would have the info and start alerting those people. Even though we have sirens here on Kauai the police go through the area alerting those that might not hear the sirens. They also tell us with their loud speakers to evacuate. New Zealand is a country that should have a way to alert every one that lives in a Tsunami zone. By the way has New Zealand ever had a Tsunami happen there? I think Hawaii has the best alert system since we are a dot in the ocean and are very concerned about Tsunamis. Aloha,Kokua
alert warning alarm guess
whatever
doesnt mater what you call it
we have a right to know “immediately”
ill make my own decisions what to do thanks
im glad all the seismic experts had you informed
all that i saw on the telly
was that it was possible!
and that no one really knew for sure
bouys are not that accurate as far as i knew
how can you say that its accurate and deffinate?
tell that to all the survivors of the last one
it silly to speak in absolutes
no one i saw up the hill were panicked
leaving your home with water and drycloths is not panicking anyway
its just being prepared.
and id do it again without blinking.
all the other governemt departments ive had to deal in the course of my life, have shown
entrenched staff and are rife with incompetence and apathy
had a look at the public health system lately ?
or dealt with winz?
what makes you think that civil defense shines as an example of organized and
reliable government service
ha
Hi silly,
Yes, I am of the same mind, and regarding the police being used to alert people in remote coastal areas, it’s just a pipe dream, they haven’t a hope of doing the job. Don’t tell me that they have a ready made list of those who need to be contacted in the event of a Tsunami, and the best way to contact them, and even if they did (which they don’t), it would be impossible for a couple of cops in a rural outpost to reach everyone in their area in time. As we already know, they often take hours to respond to call outs, even urgent ones involving violent crime . . .
The bottom line for me is that I am responsible for my own family, and I wouldn’t be doing that job if I passed that responsibility on to people who are incompetent.
It would be easy to set up a text based warning system, why rely on ancient systems prone to vast amounts of human error ?
.
Hello Kokua,
Here’s what the locals in NZ are saying:
http://www.snow.co.nz/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=8&t=004168
Aloha,
Roy
txt based system is a great idea roy
discuused the same thing tonight with friend and decided we will form a casual network
sending txts to address lists of any alerts or warnings.
civil defense should build a data base of remote dwellings and have a multi send txt sytem
it wouldnt be hard to do.
have they figured that one out yet
or is that ninetys tech a little to complicated for a government department