A tsunami scare early Tuesday morning drove some residents to high ground after they received mixed messages from Skagway Police, the National Weather Service and the Haines Borough Police.
A 7.9 magnitude earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska triggered the warning. Just after 12:30 a.m. cell phones dinged and glowed across Haines with a message from the National Weather Service: “Tsunami Danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland. Listen to local news.”
At 1:11 a.m., Skagway police issued a Nixle report stating there was no significant risk to Skagway.
“Our dispatcher just spoke with the National Weather Service in Juneau,” a Skagway Police Department Facebook post said. “They stated that they are currently not recommending evacuations for Skagway or Haines.”
At 2:24 a.m. the Haines Borough Police issued an evacuation notice.
“The National Weather Service and the Tsunami Warning Center has advised Haines residents to move to 100 feet above sea level or past 4 Mile Haines Hwy ASAP. Wait for further updates,” a Nixle report stated.
Juneau’s NOAA Warning Coordination Meteorologist Joel Curtis heard about the local evacuation order and called the Haines Borough to ask where they received that information.
“We didn’t give those specific instructions,” Curtis told the CVN. “I don’t know where that came from.”
KHNS program director Margaret Friedenauer broadcast messages from Skagway, Haines and the National Weather Service during the warning period.
In a borough debriefing on the incident Wednesday morning, she said there was confusion about the threat level when she spoke with a Skagway dispatcher.
“He said ‘Please call this guy at the National Weather Service and he will tell you there is no threat to Haines,” Friedenauer told borough and fire department staff. “I said ‘I’m getting my information from the chief of police in Haines. That’s what I put out at this moment. I don’t make that determination right now.’”
Volunteer EMT and firefighter Tim Holm was the second person to arrive at the public safety building. He said he wouldn’t have changed the evacuation order.
“What we have is a possible loss of life or property to a whole bunch of people,” Holm said at the debriefing. “I don’t know about anybody else here, but I’m not willing to base my decisions about the welfare of others off of one guy post-incident.”
Volunteer fireman Roc Ahrens said staff failed to implement the borough’s emergency command system.
“This team did not assemble at all,” Ahrens said. “What we had was a police incident. Police are under operations. They are not at the top of or in charge of the emergency operations center. This was not followed. We had no operations division.”
The borough’s incident commander in emergency situations is public facilities director Brad Ryan. However, he was out of town and no second in command was identified, Holm told the CVN. Police chief Heath Scott took the lead and set up the “emergency operations center” in the dispatch area.
Scott told the debriefing participants he doesn’t want to be the incident commander, but that there’s nowhere else in town to set up an operations center (EOC) besides the dispatch room.
“I didn’t feel comfortable handing this off to somebody because who do I hand it off to and where do they go? I don’t mean to cause hurt feelings…but this ain’t an EOC. This is a kitchenette with card tables,” Scott said, referring to the upstairs fire hall room. “There’s nowhere in this community that an EOC is set up.”
People in town were unaware of the disorganization, Friedenauer said.
Greg Podsiki said he paid attention to the alerts on his cell phone, social media and KHNS.
“The clincher was when the city sounded the siren,” Podsiki said. “That’s when we grabbed some snacks, blankets, warm jackets and pets and headed to one of my daughters’ house to alert and evacuate them and my six grandkids.”
Podsiki drove to Skyline Estates and sat in his car listening to the radio. He said he was disappointed in Skagway and was proud that “our city officials took the cautious decision and kept us on high alert.”
Haines Senior Village manager Cheryl McRoberts said a volunteer called and told her to wake the residents and to make sure they dressed warmly because they needed to move to higher ground.
“I thought it was a prank call at first,” McRoberts said.
She said the residents were “cool, calm and collected” as they waited for a handicapped-accessible van to arrive. While they were waiting to find someone who had a key to the van, 89-year-old Joan Snyder took things into her own hands.
“Joan was missing and we didn’t know where she was,” McRoberts said. “We looked out back and she had a broom and was cleaning the snow off of everyone’s car. We said if we can’t get the keys to the Care-a-van we were going to take the cars.”
Juneau warning coordinator Curtis said an open ocean earthquake-generated tsunami hitting Haines is unlikely.
Haines has a greater chance of having a local tsunami than a distant, big wave coming in through Cross Sound, through Icy Straight and up Lynn Canal, Curtis said.
A local tsunami is an event from a nearby landslide or earthquake for which destructive effects are confined to 100 kilometers, or less than one-hour travel time from its source, according to the International Tsunami Information Center.
“If I could pick a scenario where a distant tsunami got to Haines, it would be the earthquake epicenter and mass wasting due south of the Chatham Strait Fault and the wave would have to come straight up inside waters, up Lynn Canal and that’s really unlikely,” Curtis said. “The answer is that the big threats for Haines are local, not distant tsunamis.”
Mass wasting could cause a local tsunami after a landslide or earthquake knocks land into deep water.
“Go out on a rainy day in your parking lot and go to a very shallow puddle and stomp your Xtratuf in that shallow puddle; not a lot of energy is released,” Curtis said. “Now go to the pot hole and do the same thing. You have to have mass wasting of solid material to move liquid. That’s how tsunamis work and they have to start in deep water.”