Following a tsunami scare in along the West Coast in June, state and federal officials are looking into a series of technical errors that delayed the issuing of a tsunami warning in the San Francisco Bay Area.

On June 15th, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California, generating fears that a tsunami could affect the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico. Despite the fact that the tsunami alert was called off within half an hour, emergency officials expressed concern that the Bay Area's residents were not notified of a possible problem until more than an hour after the initial earthquake. A combination of problems included computer and telecommunication malfunctions, in addition to a failure of the California Warning System, part of a national telephone hot line set up for nuclear warnings in the cold war, and the federal emergency alert broadcast system.

Following the Boxing Day tsunami that devastated much of the lands bordering the Indian Ocean, many in the United States questioned this country's readiness to deal with similar disasters. The Federal Emergency Manage-ment Agency noted that tsunamis along the west coast of North America are not all that rare, but stressed that one significant difference between tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and those in the Pacific is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's tsunami warning system.