Well, it might not be that big of a deal. ;)

There was a breaking news segment that interrupted programming on global. There was a 7.2 earthquake off the coast of northern California and they said that there is a tsunami warning, it could hit Vancouver Island at about 10:40 PM tonight, and that people in coastal communities (on the west coast of Van Isle) should listen for evacuation sirens.

:sly:

...

Nevermind.

They just cancelled the warning.

That was short lived. :sleepy:

Next time, don't release the <shift> key prematurely when emphasizing an oncoming disaster with exclamation points. Please and thank you.

;)

Although seeing "!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111" seems to indicate you were in some sort of a desperate rush to post the message and warn your fellow forumers. And for that I am grateful. :)

^All in a days work.

Haha.

scary.

Door-to-door tsunami warning in Tofino

Amy Carmichael
Canadian Press

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

VANCOUVER (CP) -- In the middle of a sunny, blue-sky baseball game, Tofino's fire chief took the warning call.

A tsunami might hit in two hours -- the surf town had to be evacuated immediately.

The town has never had money to buy sirens, so Karl Hansen sent all his men out to knock on doors and usher panicked guests from beach houses and hotels to a local elementary school.

"I'm not a fan of the evacuation system," Hansen said Wednesday. "It takes a lot of manpower we could be using for something else in a disaster situation."

One of the only siren systems on the coast, set up in Port Alberni, wailed into the night. Some residents didn't know what it meant.

By 10 p.m. hundreds of people from beach houses and resorts were huddled in the Tofino elementary school, fighting flashbacks of dramatic news footage of the tsunami that devastated parts of southeast Asia in December.

The worry was bigger than the wave that eventually lolled onto the beach, looking more like a goodnight kiss from Mother Nature than any sort of disaster.

It was two centimetres high.

"Everybody is so bloody hypersensitive after we underestimated the earthquake magnitude in Sumatra. People are really concerned about making another mistake," said Rick Thomson, research scientist at the Department of Fisheries and Ocean's Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C.

"It's understandable but we really do have to worry about issuing false warnings. The worst thing the warning centre can do is cry wolf one too many times."

The bulletin was generated after a 7.4 earthquake broke in the waters off the coast of California.

Thomson said it never would have turned into an evacuation alert before the December tsunami.

Being overly cautious, this time, isn't horrible though, he said, hoping the event scared people enough to jolt them into action and get ready for the real thing. Because there's no doubt it's coming and it will be devastating, he said.

"We are at risk. The next major tsunami may hit tomorrow or 500 years from now, but it is coming and it will be severe."

B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman said the warning response showed the province knows what to do in the event of a major emergency.

"Within half an hour of there being a possibility a wave could hit, 26 communities on the coast of Vancouver Island were contacted to make sure they were moving on their plans," Coleman said.

The Provincial Emergency Program officials knew right away the earthquake was small and the risk of a major tsunami was low. Centres like Vancouver and Victoria were not going to be hit, as they were sheltered from the wave's path.

Coleman said there could have been a glitch in notifying media outlets and that the entire response effort would be reviewed.

"We're going to do a post-mortem on that. The concern coming out of this is the broader communication to major media. We're going to look at how that could be improved."

Tofino Mayor Al Anderson said there has to be a better way to get the word out.

"A lot of people on the coast tune into CBC radio when something is happening, and it wasn't on the radio. I spoke to a friend who lives on the beach and she said her phone line went dead. The lines were probably jammed with people trying to figure out what to do."

He's hoping the scare will remind officials that smaller coastal communities need more help.

He's waiting for a federal grant that he hopes will come in October to buy a siren system.

Coleman said even with that, there will probably still have to be a door-to-door evacuation operation because people will be confused.

Some residents in Port Alberni said the siren sounded like a drill at the local fire station.

Others flew into panic when the tsunami warning system blared out its pre-programmed message: "Tsunami warning! Tsunami warning! Evacuate to higher ground!"

Emergency officials ran to pubs and bars in the low-lying area warning people to move.

"You should have seen it, it was chaos in here," Ken Terryberry, owner of a local Dairy Queen, told the Alberni Valley Times.

"As soon as it went off, people took off. People left their ice cream on the counter and there was food sitting on the tables."

Terryberry said that within minutes, he found himself alone in an empty restaurant.

Local officials said they were glad to have spent the money to put the siren system in place.

Towns in the biggest risk path on the coast were given $1 million in January, after the earthquake in Sumatra, to improve their tsunami preparedness systems.

Many are still in the planning stages and haven't spent the money.

© Canadian Press 2005

its all to real , when you see something like this . The intire Government droped the ball and so did the media . Here in Kamloops , I didnt know untill I saw it on KTLA from socal 2 days after . Frigin idiot's , why would they not let people know ? O rmaybe they knew it was a false alarm too .