Norfolk is tsunami-ready and has a sign to prove it

Jim Talbot, Norfolk’s assistant director of emergency preparedness and response, holds one of the city’s tsunami warning signs. A TsunamiReady community must have tsunami training for workers and residents and install special warning and instruction signs in vulnerable areas. (Delores Johnson / The Virginian-Pilot)

By TONY GERMANOTTA
The Virginian-Pilot

Norfolk is the first major city on the East Coast to be certified as ready to react should an asteroid, earthquake or landslide send a deadly wall of water racing at its shore.

The city was recently declared tsunami ready by the National Weather Service, joining tiny Indian Harbour Beach in Florida as the only localities on the Atlantic Coast to meet the government’s seismic sea wave standards.

Jim Talbot, Norfolk’s assistant director of emergency preparedness and response, decided to pursue the federal TsunamiReady certification, even though he admits the odds are better for him to hit the Mega Millions lottery than for a tsunami to strike Hampton Roads.

“I went after it because of the potential there would be some federal funds available,” he said. Then again, in his business, he said, you can’t be too careful.

It wasn’t a difficult process, he said. It mainly involved in-cluding in the city’s emergency plan what to watch for and do in the case of a tsunami.The city, like Chesapeake, Newport News, Hampton and Virginia Beach, already met the Weather Service’s StormReady standards, noted Bill Sammler, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service regional office in Wakefield.

Sammler helped Norfolk with its application and is planning a special recognition ceremony Jan. 24 at Nauticus that will feature top brass from the Weather Service and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It says Norfolk has gone one step further in all its hazard preparedness to include specific tsunami preparedness activities,” Sammler said of the certification.

Mainly, he said, a TsunamiReady community must have tsunami training for workers and residents and install special warning and instruction signs in vulnerable areas, such as Ocean View and Willoughby Spit.

In addition, he said, theTsunamiReady program requires communities to have more than one way to obtain tsunami and severe weather warnings and forecasts.

Talbot turned to the nearby Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Center at Norfolk Naval Station as his alternative to the National Weather Service.He instituted a yearly training for his emergency workers and those who watch over the beaches to make sure they recognize signs of impending tsunamis, such as massive drawbacks of water along the shore. Many of those who died in Asia were swept away after walking onto drained sea beds.

Norfolk workers are now instructed to immediately close down the beaches and contact the emergency services department should they see such a drawback, Talbot said.

Next week, signs will be installed along the Chesapeake Bay that will tell people that if they hear a tsunami warning or see a severe water drawback, they should head inland from the Bay or climb above the 4th floor of buildings.It is the requirement for such warning signs that has Virginia Beach still debating whether it wants to be part of the TsunamiReady program, said Mark Marchbank, Talbot’s counterpart in Virginia Beach.

Marchbank, the Beach’s deputy coordinator for emer gency management, said his city is considering most of the elements of the program, but “I’m just not quite convinced that the tsunami evacuation signs are where we need to go .”

Although remote, he said, a tsunami is a “reasonable hazard the city of Virginia Beach should be prepared to deal with.”

So if a tsunami is hurling this way, how long would area residents have to evacuate or to rush to the top of tall buildings?

That depends, Talbot said, on what caused the tsunami and where it was located.

The biggest worry these days, he said, is a dormant volcano in the Canary Islands that began breaking apart after an earthquake in 1949 and is poised to collapse into the ocean, spawning what some say would be a wave that is 150 feet tall when it reached the East Coast.

That tsunami would speed across the Atlantic in as little as six hours, according to the W eb site of the Natural History Museum in London, and would “destroy all the major cities such as Boston, New York, Washington and Miami.”

There should be plenty of warning from a space-based threat. Asteroids or massive meteors are constantly being tracked, and scientists are unlikely to be surprised by one.

However, there could be only minutes to react should a tsunami be spawned by an earthquake, landslide or volcanic eruption on the ocean floor, especially if it occurs close to the coastline.

As the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center notes on its W eb site: “When seconds count, TsunamiReady communities are prepared.”

The Asian tsunami in 2004 gave impetus to improve monitoring, even in the Atlantic, Talbot said.

The government is planning to install a network of new Atlantic warning buoys with one about 300 miles off Cape Hatteras, Talbot said.

“Norfolk applying for the TsunamiReady program might sound a little farfetched,” Talbot said, “but if something would happen, we have procedures in effect and know what to do.”

Reach Tony Germanotta at (757) 446-2377 or tony.germanotta@pilotonline.com.