|
Friday, October 21, 2005
False tsunami warning shakes Oregon coast -- again
"The National Weather Service shook the nerves of people on the Oregon Coast by accidentally issuing a tsunami warning.
The warning interrupted television and radio broadcasts in Portland, Eugene and along the coast.
The agency was testing its internal systems yesterday and didn't mean for the bulletin to reach the public, said Tyree Wilde, the weather services' warning coordination meteorologist in Portland.
'It was an inadvertent mistake we made,' he said.
The false alarm prompted residents to flood telephone lines at radio and television stations, the Oregon Emergency Management office and police and fire agencies. Hotels in Yachats began evacuation procedures before they learned that the warning was false.
Yachats fire chief Frankie Petrick said the phones rang off the hook all morning.
'They didn't call 9-1-1,' she said. 'They called me, to see if it was in fact a test and whether they should evacuate.'
This is the second warning in six months that didn't produce a tsunami.
The last alert, on June 14, resulted from a real earthquake off the coast of Crescent City, Calif. Thought the quake didn't generate a tsunami, it created confusion and exposed gaps in preparedness at all levels of government and among the public.
Since then, emergency managers have been urging residents to head for high ground if they see or hear a tsunami warning.
"We've tried to tell people if you hear something, don't call the radio stations, don't call the TV, just go,' said Abby Kershaw, section director at Oregon Emergency Management. 'If you're going to tell people that, you can't start putting a bunch of caveats on it. It's definitely frustrating for us."
Source: Seattle Times - United States
|
