Berkeley Defends Tsunami Evacuations Amid Concerns of ‘Crying Wolf’ With Warnings

When a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the Humboldt County coast this month, and federal forecasters warned that a tsunami would arrive in the Bay Area within 80 minutes, officials throughout the region scrambled to respond.

Several cities and counties warned residents they should head for higher ground.

Berkeley went further. Guided by an inundation map from the California Geological Survey representing the worst-case flooding impacts from a potential tsunami, the city issued a mandatory evacuation order for areas along its bay shore. Emergency speakers blared warnings. Police and fire personnel cleared people from the waterfront. Schools and businesses, including some outside the danger zone, emptied.

But just as all these steps were completed, the National Tsunami Warning Center — which had forecast a tsunami of at least 3 feet — canceled the alert when it became apparent there was no threat anywhere along the coast.

Now, Berkeley officials are defending the aggressiveness of their response to the Dec. 5 alert while saying they’d like to see improvements in how tsunami warnings are handled in the future.

The city recognizes that the evacuation order raised concerns about “over-alerting and crying wolf,” Sarah Lana, Berkeley’s emergency manager, said in an interview last week. “I know that some people are concerned that the tsunami didn’t come, and we recognize that it’s a very significant impact to people, to their families, to their businesses, to do a big evacuation.”

It’s a question that has taken on renewed importance for emergency response officials after San Franciscans were jolted awake by a tornado warning on Saturday morning — the Bay Area’s second wireless emergency alert in as many weeks. That warning again left many wondering how they were supposed to respond to such an unfamiliar alert for the area.

“Regardless of the final determination of what kind of storm it was, residents were understandably anxious to receive an alert about something we don’t associate with our region,” the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management said in a statement. “Heightening the concern is the fact that this is the second WEA in the past two weeks for hazards with low probability like tornados and tsunamis.”

Lana said several factors came together to prompt Berkeley’s tsunami evacuation order, including that the National Tsunami Warning Center had issued its highest level of alert and that the state’s inundation map showed a serious threat to West Berkeley. The location of the earthquake, about 225 miles northwest of the Golden Gate, was also crucial.

“This earthquake was so close, relatively speaking, to the Bay Area that the processes for measuring and confirming this tsunami were just not fast enough for us to be able to wait on taking action,” Lana said.

Places such as San Francisco, San Mateo County, Alameda County and the city of  Fremont warned residents to head for higher ground after the tsunami warning but did not roll out widespread evacuation orders like Berkeley.

Lana said it’s important for emergency officials to be able to act even “with not all the information they need.” That means trusting guidance from federal and state sources about potential threats.

“They’ve been working very hard on providing guidance that we can implement quickly when the time comes. And that’s what we opted to do,” she said.

In the aftermath, Lana said she’s talked to federal officials about the need for more precise warnings.

“I have expressed those concerns to our partners at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,” she said. “I think this is a place where we just need to be able to support our government scientists and making the changes that we all want to make and they also want to make.”

Lana said the city will continue to lean toward the side of caution to keep residents safe.

“It’s important that if we have the potential for people to be in danger and that we have that information, that we act quickly,” Lana said. “And hopefully, it’s for just a warning that doesn’t materialize. But, you know, one of these days, it’s not going to be a warning. It’s going to be a real thing.”