Oregon Coast tsunami advisory ends, but alert spurred fervent activity

The tsunami advisory along the Oregon and Washington coasts was lifted Wednesday morning, following a quake off the coast of Russia Tuesday.

But the alert spurred plenty of activity while it was active.

About 120 kids were evacuated from an overnight camp on the banks of the Salmon River estuary near Lincoln City when the tsunami watch was issued, and then upgraded to an advisory.

Camp Westwind director Laura Chase said she spent a few nervous hours trying to figure out how bad the tsunami might be. But by 9 p.m. she had moved the children upland and indoors in an abundance of caution.

“I think we made the right decision moving everybody off of the waterway,” Chase said.

For her, the Camp Mystic flooding tragedy in Texas was front of mind, though that was a very different scenery.

Camp councilors moved the children indoors, telling them the weather forecast had changed. They didn’t want to panic anyone, and the kids did not have their cell phones.

“We knew that keeping kids safe meant keeping them off the beaches for the next day. Keeping them off the waterways, instead of trying to explain what a tsunami means,” Chase said.

While the tsunami advisory lifted by Wednesday morning, Erin Zysett with the Oregon Department of Emergency Management, said people still need to be careful.

“There’s going to be an increase of debris washing up during the next few days,” Zysett said. “One of the things that we tell people when you’re going to the Oregon Coast is be aware of those big logs.”

Even though the tsunami waves detected at the coast were only a couple feet high, they can still easily lift a beached log and drag it into the surf, essentially creating a floating battering ram.

Zysett said that tsunami waves are also very different from regular waves. Rather than being generated by surface weather, they’re generated along the ocean floor. And the resulting currents can be a lot stronger.

“It is actually the ocean moving, in the same way that you can slosh a bucket that’s full of water and it’ll slosh over the sides,” Zysett said. “The waves are a lot more intense. So even when they’re 2 to 3 feet high, it’s a different kind of wave than people would normally surf into.”

At the Current Café in Oceanside, a town west of Tillamook with spotty cell reception, owner Tyler McCommas said he learned about the tsunami from an email sent by the Oceanside Neighborhood Association at 7 p.m.

“Plenty of heads up,” he said, pleased that word got out before the waves.

McCommas followed hourly updates from Tillamook County emergency management and used NOAA’s tsunami.org website.

He said that while younger residents had plenty of timely information, he’s not sure how well phone and web based alerts work for the less tech savvy.

“My only concern would be for the elderly community, who is not familiar with using those resources,” McCommas said.

Coastal residents had several hours to prepare for Wednesday morning’s waves. But in a Cascadia Subduction Zone quake, they’d only have 15 to 20 minutes to reach higher ground.

Adam Batz, with the National Weather Service, said in the event of a Cascadia Subduction Zone quake an alert would be issued within 10 minutes.

“We would have something out, whether it’s on social media or our emergency alert system.” Batz said.

But the first alert people will get is the earth shaking for up to five minutes. If that happens, authorities say people should immediately head for higher ground.

Scientists estimate that there’s a 15% chance of a magnitude-8 subduction quake along the Oregon coast in the next 50 years.