Re: “Tsunami threat tests preparedness of communities and residents alike,” Jan. 24.
I got two texts from the Town of Sidney, about 3 a.m., plus a phone call from them about the possible tsunami wave. It was good service and it showed me the Town of Sidney’s response mechanism (an opt-in system) worked well.
But the responses on much of lower Vancouver Island, with people getting rousted out of their low-lying dwellings and told to go to higher ground. Wow!
The earthquake occurred 90 minutes earlier. Any thinking emergency organization knows some earthquakes produce tsunamis, and many do not.
And they should have previously documented tsunami travel times. In this case, it would take 41Ú2 hours for a tsunami to reach our shores.
Those agencies should have, as part of the response process, simply picked up the phone and called a series of communities nearer the epicentre to see if there really was a wave created by the earthquake. In this case, the answer would have been no, and the Lower Island, as well as many other communities, would have been spared the expense and angst of an unnecessary, overdone reaction.
The emergency-response agencies in this area should review their analysis process. A few simple phone calls in this case, and money, angst and believability could have been preserved until we really need it.
George James
Sidney
