Officials Question Tsunami Warnings

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.