Tsunami forums are planned beginning this week in LaPush, Neah Bay, Port Angeles and Sequim.
State Emergency Management officials will bring scientists to the forums to tell how tsunamis are generated and describe their destructive potential.
The forums:
■ 9:30 a.m. Tuesday — LaPush, hosted by the Quileute tribe.
For information, phone Keri Shepherd at 360-374-9651.
■ 1:30 p.m. Tuesday — Neah Bay, hosted by the Makah tribe.
For information, phone Andrew Winck at 360-645-3279.
■ Noon Thursday — Port Angeles City Council chambers, 321 E. Fifth St.
■ 6 p.m. Thursday, March 24 — Sequim Community Church, 950 N. Fifth Ave.
Although infrequent, tsunamis are a significant natural hazard to Clallam County,” said Jamye Wisecup, Clallam County Emergency Management program coordinator.
“They can only be dealt with effectively through programs of preparedness, mitigation and education,” she said.
For more information, phone Clallam County Emergency Management at 360-417-2525 or 360-417-2483.
‘Vertical evacuation’
Similar tsunami meetings are being held in Westport and Ocean Shores.
“Vertical evacuation” is the term state officials have been using in forums in those coastal communities.
It means find a tall building or high ground to escape the killer waves.
Grays Harbor County Emergency Management officials area also are talking about building elevated platforms in low areas along the coast.
There are two types of tsunami threats for low-lying coastal communities that include the Long Beach Peninsula, Ocean Shores, LaPush and other communities that are vulnerable to tsunami waves that could reach 30 feet in height.
Some of those tsunamis could originate across the Pacific Ocean, triggered by a huge earthquake in Japan.
But a major coastal quake off the Washington state coast is also expected to cause huge tsunamis.
There would be hours of warning after a quake from Japan or Alaska, allowing people to follow well-marked tsunami evacuation routes to higher ground.
The reaction time to a quake off the Washington coast would likely be less than 30 minutes, officials say.
Even if roads weren’t damaged or destroyed from the quake, driving is not considered much of an option because of the short warning time.
And in situations with no high ground close by, what’s a person to do?
Walking distance
The solution is build higher ground closer to where people live, within 15 minutes of walking distance, officials say.
“These include a series of berms, towers or structures like parking garages,” said John Schelling from Washington State’s Emergency Management Division.
Such platforms might include shelters or stored survival supplies, and people would likely need to stay in place for 12 hours.
During the killer tsunami that struck in December 2004, many people died in resort communities along the coast of Thailand.
But people who were two or three stories up in hotels survived, while people on the ground or on the beach perished.
Designing refuges
The University of Washington’s College of Built Environments is coming up with the design concepts, including recreational facilities that become refuges.
UW urban design professor Bob Freitag has a team of colleagues and students volunteering to design elevated platforms and other “safe havens” in tsunami-risk areas.
“We’re tying to see that these structures are not single purpose, that they help frame the community visually that they are not a detractor,” said Freitag in an interview with KING-TV in Seattle.