The National Weather Service has updated the emergency phone alert messaging that Alaskans receive when a tsunami is expected.
Dave Snider, the tsunami warning coordinator with the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, read the new language in a National Weather Service YouTube video last week.
“The National Weather Service has issued a tsunami warning," Snider read. "A series of dangerous, life threatening currents and waves are expected to flood low-lying coastal areas. Move to high ground or inland now to prevent injury or death. Stay away until local officials say you can return. Check your official sources or tsunami.gov for more information.”
Snider said the updated message was crafted with input from community and state leaders from around the U.S. It will be sent out in English and Spanish.
The new wording is intended to reduce confusion for people who get the tsunami emergency alert but aren’t in risky areas. A 2023 earthquake near Sand Point for example, triggered cell phones emergency tsunami alerts across huge swaths of Alaska with older messaging, "You are in danger. Move to high ground or inland now.”
Similarly, in July of 2020, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the Aleutian Islands triggered the cell phone alerts across coastal Alaska, including some in the Anchorage area that shouldn’t have gone off.
“When that happens though, that language needs to be very specific to tell the right people to move to the right place at the right time," Snider said.
In that 2023 case, that short, simple language was correct for people near the quake. But problematic for people that weren’t at risk.
Snider said the system’s geographic imprecision is the underlying issue.
“What we really need to solve this problem is a way to reach alerting areas that are specifically targeted for only tsunami hazard areas, those areas that are at risk from tsunamis. We don’t have that today," he said. "We’re relying on other systems both within the Weather Service and outside of the Weather Service to reach our coastal communities in that moment of alert. If we solve that problem with the front end then we’ll be a lot better off, and we’ll keep more people safe, more effectively with any language we send.”
The updated alert message went into effect on March 24, during National Tsunami Awareness Week.
The Alaska Emergency Operations Center is supposed to test the alert system annually. In the past, the test was done around the March anniversary of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake.
