Residents all over San Francisco and Alameda County received tsunami evacuation warnings around 10:50 this morning after an earthquake was reported off the coast of Humboldt county.
One emergency alert from the National Weather Service read: “A series of powerful waves and strong currents may impact coasts near you. You are in danger. Get away from the coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now.”
Because of the earthquake, the BART transbay tube was temporarily closed, causing major delays in all directions.
Some Bay Area residents took the warning seriously, and quickly sought higher ground. But some did not. There were reports of ‘tsunami watchers’ hanging out near Fort Mason and Ocean Beach, despite evacuation orders. KALW’s Molly Blair Salyer spoke to one SF resident, Modi Herrera, who said the order didn’t make him feel nervous at all.
“Honestly, I wanted to go to the beach,” Herrera said. “But I’m stupid.”
Less than an hour later, the tsunami warning was cancelled. and many people were left wondering, “What just happened?”
In an interview with ABC7, Stanford Geophysics Lecturer Ross Stein explained why the warning was issued and canceled so quickly. According to Stein, the earthquake initially appeared to be a shallow, 6.0 magnitude earthquake. Scientists would expect an earthquake of this depth and magnitude to move the seafloor up and down, and thus to produce tsunamis.
But, then scientists realized it was actually a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Larger, but more typical, and less likely to cause a large tsunami.
Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency in Del Norte, Humboldt, and Mendocino counties. This will make it easier to send assistance to regions that were impacted by the earthquake.
Aftershocks are still possible, but unlikely to occur far from the epicenter.
A look at neighborhoods around the Bay
Certain parts of San Francisco and the Bay Area were more at risk than others. Residents in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset — a high-risk zone — wondered why they didn’t hear sirens, alerting them to evacuate.
The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management says, “In addition to utilizing AlertSF, social and traditional media, first responders warned residents of the tsunami risk with the public address systems mounted to their vehicles.”
According to reporting from Mission Local, San Francisco’s emergency siren system has been disabled for the last five years. At the end of 2019 the system was turned off for security upgrades, and was expected to return in two years. But the DEM has struggled to obtain the funds needed to turn it back on.
- In the East Bay, the Berkeley Police Department issued evacuation orders for West Berkeley. They listed at least 10 at-risk tsunami zones in Berkeley including The Berkeley Waterfront, Tom Bates Fields, West Frontage Road, the I-80 Freeway, and Aquatic Park.
In Oakland, Senior Emergency Planning Coordinator Kyle Trambley says officials were caught off guard when the National Weather Service issued the tsunami warning. According to a city map, even in a worst case scenario, less than three percent of Oaklanders would be exposed to a tsunami hazard area. However, Trambley says they were ready to deploy the city’s emergency siren system, which they test once a month.
You can see the hazard map for all of Alameda County here.
You can opt in for emergency alerts in Alameda County here. And you can sign up for alerts in any other Bay Area county here.
We will continue to update this article as information comes in.
What questions do you have about the Tsunami Warning that went out? Send them to us: news@kalw.org
