Damage at the Port of Brookings, Ore., after the tsunami from Japan in 2011.
Kristian Foden-Vencil / OPB News
The entire Southern Oregon coast is breathing a collective sigh of relief.
A strong earthquake off the coast of northern California on Thursday triggered a tsunami warning for the coast, all the way up to just south of Florence.
The waves didn’t really come. But for about an hour, local governments had to mobilize an emergency response to a threat that’s always kind of lurking under the surface.
Jeff Hughes, emergency manager for Curry County, says Thursday’s warning came with many lessons, including the importance of being prepared.
“The big takeaway for me is improving the amount and quality of training and information given out to the public ahead of time,” said Hughes. “[To] try to assist the public in getting prepared to help themselves when we get our next warning for the same type of incident.”
Hughes talked with OPB’s “All Things Considered” co-host Geoff Norcross on other lessons he’s learned, how he plans to improve the county’s alert systems and the possibility of bringing back the county’s tsunami sirens, which were discontinued in 2019.
Related: Tsunami warning expires along southern Oregon, northern California coast
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Geoff Norcross: When you were first alerted about the possibility of a tsunami, how much time did you think you had before it would have hit the coast?
Jeff Hughes: Once I received the tsunami warning, there wasn’t a time that came with it for the initial wave — that came a few minutes afterwards. Typically with a tsunami, we have an hour or two, or even more depending on the distance from shore, where the cause was. In this instance, when I got the notification of the time of the first wave, it was a 20 minute time until arrival.
Norcross: Wow, 20 minutes. Given that short timeframe, how did residents in your county get notified and evacuated, if needed?
Hughes: Most of our residents were notified, at least initially. We’re trying to figure out what the actual effectiveness of it was, but most were notified by the USGS automatic tech service — that’s actually how I was initially notified.
Our dispatch center sent out a notice through our Everbridge system, which is a subscription-based system here in the county that we can use to disseminate information to folks. From that point, we were able to start sending emergency vehicles out to the low-lying areas to try to do a loud hailing and a notification in person to the people that were in the lowest areas.
Norcross: One tool that you didn’t have that you may have had in the past was sirens. Back in 2019, the county commission voted to suspend operations of its tsunami sirens, although there were some others in some towns in Curry County that were operational. I’m wondering what that meant for your ability to notify people?
Hughes: Especially with a circumstance where we had such a short time to get the word out to everyone, the lack of sirens was a bit of a hindrance. I know of the three sirens that I know are operative, two were activated in accordance with that individual agency’s policies and procedures. I know at least for folks in the north end, a lot of people in the Port Orford area did hear that, did respond to that siren.
Related: What to do during a tsunami warning
Norcross: I’m wondering — obviously you can’t know this — what this might mean for revisiting the question of whether or not those county sirens should be operating?
Hughes: That’d be something I would be looking into to see if there’s any way that we can, with local money and local effort, to try to refurbish and get the remaining sirens that aren’t being currently used up and running. The last information I had is that the county didn’t have the funds to get new ones installed, and the state didn’t have money allocated also to have new sirens installed. But that was third-hand information I received a little while ago.
Norcross: Sure, so it’s a funding issue as it usually is. This ended up being a kind of practice run for the tsunami that will come someday, and I know your day is being spent assessing how your systems worked. But what early lessons are emerging here?
Hughes: The biggest one is trying to improve our information that we put out to our public beforehand, to try to educate the public. When you do get your notification that a tsunami is in the area — and you are in the area for that — that citizens already know that they’re in a low-lying area, that they need to evacuate and take it upon themselves once they receive that notification to evacuate.
Our 911 center was inundated with 911 calls and people trying to confirm that it was a real alert or what they should do. Clearly that’s a system that needs to be saved for other emergencies, on top of the one that we’re already dealing with.
So the big takeaway for me is improving the amount and quality of training and information given out to the public ahead of time, and try to assist the public in getting prepared to help themselves when we get our next warning for the same type of incident.
Norcross: In the meantime, what is your message for Curry County residents now that they’ve gotten a taste of what could happen?
Hughes: My big message would be: research where your location is at. If you check online for the inundation maps, the whole shoreline of Oregon has easy-to-follow inundation maps, that’ll show you whether your location is in an inundation zone. Then if you are, start making plans right now: which direction are you going to go when you receive the notice to evacuate? What’s your secondary route in case your primary route is blocked? Do you have a small amount of stuff you can take with you that you can sustain yourself during the incident while it’s occurring?
Spend a little time educating yourself on tsunamis. If the first wave arrives, it doesn’t mean that once the first wave arrives that that’s the end of it. This is an incident that can continue for several hours, and actually get worse over time from after the arrival. The first wave, the second and third waves can be bigger than the first.
So my recommendation is to educate yourselves. Figure out if that’s something you need to do to get yourselves out of the inundation zone, make a little plan and follow through with it. Like we saw [Thursday], we may or may not have time in the government to be able to individually notify everyone what’s going on, based on the fact we just don’t have time to respond to that.
Norcross: I know, Jeff, that you have only been on the job for four months, and you work in emergency services on the coast. Tsunami preparedness is going to be a part of your job, but I’m wondering what it meant to you to have this happen so soon after you started working there?
Hughes: Well, it showed me what things I had done right to prepare, and what things I had done wrong — and there’s a bunch of both. It really highlighted things I need to speed up on and get taken care of, so that I’m providing the best service I can for my citizens that I’m responsible for.
