BC changes tsunami alerts following criticism
Posted November 13, 2012 6:25 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Following the Oct. 27 magnitude-7.7 earthquake that rocked Haida Gwaii and BC’s northern coast, the provincial government came under fire for taking too long to notify people about a possible tsunami.
Some municipal politicians and first responders, such as police and fire officials, complained they had to wait as long as an hour to receive the warning.
The Ministry of Justice says that under its new system, it will forward alerts it receives from the US-based West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Centre to all local authorities, first responders and media. After the emails are sent, the Crown agency will post information on Twitter and other social media sites.
Information will also be available on Emergency Management BC’s blog for people with smartphones, and the government is developing an interactive map of tsunami warning zones, so people can determine if they are at risk.
“Frankly, I’d rather [British Columbians] were inundated with information than sat waiting for something to arrive,” says Shirley Bond, minister of justice and attorney general. “So we’re going to look at as many ways as possible of getting that information out.”
In fact, within three minutes of receiving an alert about an earthquake off Alaska’s coast Monday, the provincial government’s social-media team was activated and was sharing the information online. That quake was measured at about a magnitude-6.5 in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska and there was no threat of a tsunami.
Bond says the provincial government is adding the email-forwarding service, partly because the US tsunami-warning centre is changing how it delivers its service and will no longer provide email alerts to the “broad list” of clients it currently serves.
Bond adds the provincial government will continue to receive those alerts, and she wanted to make sure that the government had a process in place to deliver those alerts until it knows what the new US service looks like.
During the next 30 days, the provincial government will also test its new email notification system.
