First large-scale tsunami warning since 1980

Well a bunch has gone on since the cancelled Tsunami warning. Our town said they messed up as a whole... Luckily it wasn't for real. Emergency lines were inundated with non-emergency calls, they never engaged the reverse 911 call system, so those of us waiting for that were idiots! City Hall, the Police, The Fire Department, and our radio station didn't have any lines open to call each other. All of this is going to be changed, along with going back to the old fashioned air raid sirens...

" FLORENCE - Oregon emergency managers spent Wednesday analyzing their response to the previous night's tsunami warning, looking for flaws in their plans.

Two problems were immediately clear: Conflicting bulletins confused some emergency managers - one said there was no warning in effect, the other issued an alert. And coastal communities reacted to the warning differently. Some evacuated their residents. Others didn't, waiting for word of an actual tsunami from the National Weather Service.

The thing to do, said state earthquake and tsunami program coordinator Jay Wilson, was to clear out low-lying areas as soon as the warning came.

"If we waited for how long it took scientists to basically scale down the size of the earthquake, it would have been too late," Wilson said.

In fact, if a tsunami had been generated from Tuesday's quake, it would have hit shore before it struck buoys in the ocean that scientists rely on to detect tsunamis, said geophysicist Bruce Turner, directing the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, which issued the alert after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California on Tuesday night.

"Travel time to the buoys was about 48 minutes," Turner said of the "what if" estimates from last night's readings. "Travel time to the coast was 30 minutes. The buoys didn't help us as much as we would have liked."

But Florence officials told callers to stand by and listen for more information on the radio, Siuslaw Valley Fire Protection District Chief John Buchanan said. He consulted with the Florence city manager and port manager and decided to wait." Read about this in the Register Guard.

"In the coastal community of Florence, there were no evacuations or warning sirens. Instead, people parked their cars at the peak of coastal cliffs between Florence and Yachats to watch the water, The Register-Guard of Eugene reported. "Read the story from KATU.

Our neighborhood, which includes the 4 houses, and 4 vacation rentals, have developed a plan for the next one, which includes the vacationers who won't be expecting it. We all agreed we should have left the first time, standing around discussing it, while waiting for the official call was a STUPID idea.