Individual agencies have direct access to additional notification tools, such as email, various social media platforms and public safety-centric “Nixle” alerts. In emergency notification situations such as the tsunami, Netcom generally serves as the middleman, passing alerts on to local fire and emergency agencies, which then decide who gets notified. “Which is why we said, if we did the whole county, the tsunami’s going to be over by the time someone gets the message.” Even though we have it set that way, it doesn’t mean that it can go that fast,” French said. Santa Cruz County-specific coastal inundation maps, last updated in 2009, are available online at conservation.ca.gov/cgs/tsunami. 15 alerts prioritize those living in coastal areas most likely to flood. French said that she recommended the Jan. During a recent countywide emergency alert system test, messages took hours to reach some users, due to the size of the audience and poor data transfer infrastructure in some parts of the county. In ideal conditions, the CodeRED system allows for messages of a minute or less in length to be distributed to 1,500 phones per minute, said Netcom Operations Division Manager Stephanie French. Let’s get the notification out critically to those closest, let’s use these other resources to notice folks that might be down at the beach and let’s try and avoid the looky-loo effect, so to speak.” “What we found in the early morning part of what we call our situational awareness gathering period is that we knew it was coming, we knew it was going to be smaller than 2011, but that it still posed a general risk to beachgoers and people along the shoreline,” Reid said. York - Santa Cruz Sentinel)īeginning shortly after 9 a.m., the agency began distributing CodeRED tsunami advisory messages to residents with addresses listed in the county’s predetermined tidal inundation zones, according to Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1 General Manager Amethyst Uchida. Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1 Operations Division Manager Stephanie French and General Manager Amethyst Uchida pose outside the Netcom dispatch center in DeLaveaga Park in Santa Cruz. Officials deemed CodeRED as the relevant platform for the day’s tsunami advisory. Netcom also turns to the CodeRED notification system, where users must opt-in and register for their preferred notification style, for less imminent alerts. The emergency dispatch agency, also referred to as “Netcom,” has the technology to send reverse 911 recorded phone messages to land phone lines and mobile phones within the range of targeted cell towers in specified geographic locations, activating a system known as IPAWS (Integrated Public Alerts and Warning System). Prior to that alert, the impacts of the tsunami were not well modeled in national forecasts, said Dave Reid, director of the Santa Cruz Office of Response, Recovery & Resilience. coast would see waves 1-3 feet higher than usual, an alert that automatically was distributed to, among other locations, the Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1 center. Setting local notifications in motion, the National Weather Service advised that the U.S. So who received a warning the tsunami was on its way? First surge on horizon Once the imminent threat of danger had receded, watercooler and social media discussions lit up with musings about the local emergency notification strategy. By comparison, the Matsunami, resulting from a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the coast of Japan, resulted in more than $20 million in harbor district repairs. Irregular wave activity continued through 1 p.m.Įchoing the area’s last tsunami a decade earlier, the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor suffered the highest reported property damages in the area and authorities plan to seek federal aid to repair costs estimated of more than $6.5 million. A similar-sized peak an hour later and a slightly smaller wave striking around noon. 15, the National Weather Service upgraded the tsunami’s threat level to the California coast to an “advisory” - its second-highest warning stage - after an underwater volcanic eruption off the coast of the island nation of Tonga sent surges across the Pacific Ocean.īy 8 a.m., a wave nearly 2.3 feet higher than the norm rolled into the Central Coast, according to data collected at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tide station near the Monterey Municipal Wharf. A tsunami from an underground volcano near Tonga hits the Small Craft Harbor in Santa Cruz on Jan. SANTA CRUZ - Though more high tide than tidal wave when it struck Monterey Bay, last month’s tsunami left some community members wondering who was given an emergency alert, and when.
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