November 8, 2018
Tsunami False Alarms Problems
Four of the five tsunamis announced to occur in the world turned out to be false due to lack of ambiguous dependence between earthquake magnitudes and tsunami intensity, which causes stress and mistrust among population, ignoring operative forecasts and enormous material damage due to seizure of production activities. This is from the information from the “Humans, society and state in ensuring life activities safety of modern Russia”” scientific-practical conference held on 23rd of October 2018 at the Russian Scientific-Research Institute for civil defence and emergencies of the Emergencies Ministry of Russia.
“The issue of false alarms is the main problem of operative forecasting of tsunami. Since their establishment, tsunami watch services reported a large number of such forecasts (75-80%), - notes the report “Problems of operative forecasting of tsunami.”
It was earlier reported that for the past 66 years the Russian Far East region suffered over 40 severe tsunamis. In ten cases, the wave heights were over 5 meter, while in 1952, 1963, 1969, 1994, and 2006 at certain watch points to and over 15 metres high waves were recorded. In November 1952, one of the most ruining tsunamis of 20 century actually destroyed Severo-Kurilsk city and washed off all villages in the northern Kuril Isle and southern Kamchatka. This tsunami took lives of 2 336 people.
The document notes that most of false alarms creates ungrounded stress situation for population, causes mistrust among people and they then ignore the alarms. For there is no definite dependence between magnitudes of earthquakes and tsunami intensity, different development situations are possible for them.
“Without any possibility for adequate assessment of the degree of hazard, and supported by the magnitude criterion only, the tsunami watch services announce tsunami alarm,” – the report stresses.
False alarms, often announced excessively early, lead to significant loss due to seizure of producton, massive evacuation of population and unharboring of vessels to the open sea. And any activities at coastal area stops for several hours as minimum.