‘Prepared for a long stay': tsunami alert triggers mass evacuations across Pacific

The Guardian

4 days ago

In the Pacific territory of Guam, just before lunchtime on Tuesday, Sam Mabini's phone began to ping. A tsunami warning was issued after a powerful 8.8-magnitude quake struck a remote part of the Russian coast. Authorities put out the alert over concerns that destructive waves could slam the shoreline in the coming hours, urging people to move away from the coast. Mabini, a former Guam senator, took action.
'I went to higher ground just in case,' Mabini said. Her family lives in the lower area of Tamuning and they moved to a more elevated part of the village. She joined other residents who evacuated to Agana Heights, a higher part of Guam's capital, Hagåtña.
In towns and cities across the Pacific, from Guam to Saipan and Hawaii, warnings and evacuation orders rang after the quake, one of the strongest ever recorded. Workers were sent home and businesses locked down as they braced for what might hit in the hours ahead.
In parts of Russia, waves of up to 4 metres were recorded and authorities urged people to move away from the shoreline. In Japan, footage by the public broadcaster NHK showed many people in the northern island of Hokkaido on the roof of a building, sheltering under tents from the beating sun, as fishing boats left harbours to avoid potential damage from the incoming waves.
About 200 people in Japan evacuated to a Buddhist temple that sits on high ground overlooking Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, a city that lost around 1,250 residents in the devastating March 2011 tsunami. The Senjuin temple is a designated municipal tsunami evacuation area.
The chief priest Keio Shibasaki told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper: 'Considering that more than 1,000 people took refuge here after the [2011] earthquake, the number of evacuees is relatively small, but we have started preparing lunch with stored food in case of unforeseen circumstances such as power outages. We are prepared for a long stay.'
Evacuees included staff from the city hall, post office, and children and teachers from the nearby Kamaishi kindergarten.
'We evacuated when the tsunami warning was issued,' the kindergarten head, Keito Fujiwara, told the Mainichi Shimbun. 'We stored emergency food supplies at the temple and have been preparing accordingly. During the 2011 earthquake, there were cases where parents went to pick up their children and became victims, so we communicated via group LINE [a popular Japanese messaging app] that under no circumstances should anyone go to pick up their children.'
In 2011, the tsunami waves swept over the Kamaishi tsunami protection breakwater, a decades-long $1.5bn project which had been completed two years previously, inundating the city in scenes that were captured on video and seen around the world.
In Hawaii, tsunami warning sirens blared twice on Tuesday afternoon on multiple islands, including Oahu, where the capital Honolulu is located, and Kauai. Evacuations were ordered for some coastal areas as the Honolulu department of emergency management warned: 'Take Action! Destructive tsunami waves expected.'
As residents raced to get out, traffic backed up in some Honolulu neighbourhoods and officials were preparing to open a mountain pass as an evacuation route out of Waianae, a coastal community on the island of Oahu, said the state representative, Darius Kila. Even though it is summer break for pupils, some schools issued alerts cancelling sports and other activities.
Kyle Kajihiro, assistant professor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, was on campus when he received a warning alert on his mobile phone. He reported the campus was shutting down and traffic on Honolulu's highways was heavy.
On Kauai, shortly after the tsunami warning was issued, staff at the National Tropical Botanical Garden suspended tours on its south shore and moved all visitors and employees out of the inundation zone to higher ground.
Still, blue skies and breezy conditions prevailed as many in Hawaii left work early heading for home or designated safe areas away from the islands' heavily populated coastline. Residents have become particularly sensitive to phone warning and civil defence sirens after Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency issued a false alert warning of an inbound 'ballistic missile threat' in 2018, causing widespread panic.
All islands activated emergency operating centres, shelters began opening, and people in coastal areas were advised to head to higher ground immediately. Kauai police asked the public to stay off the road unless absolutely necessary.
In Guam, residents were urged to remain out of the water and told to move away from beaches and harbours, at least 100 feet (30 metres) inland and 50 feet above sea level. The port authority and other government agencies suspended operations, while marina users and local residents were told to evacuate to higher ground. Workers in some businesses – including the Guam visitors bureau in the coastal district of Tumon – were sent home.
But some were not worried by the warnings. Tessa Borja, a policy analyst from Tumon, did not feel evacuating was necessary and stayed in her second-floor apartment. 'We are protected by the reef,' she said.
In nearby Saipan, the largest island and capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, similar warnings were issued. Government offices were closed and businesses in low-lying areas shut their doors. Petrol stations had long lines of vehicles wanting to fill up.
Some residents living near the shoreline in Saipan, an island of about 43,000 people, fled to higher ground as they waited for the all clear from authorities. Tsunami drills by emergency authorities have been held regularly in on the island.