The Alaska Emergency Operations Center mistakenly sent an evacuation order to Unalaskans after a mid-July earthquake due to confusion over geography, a state emergency official said July 28.
The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning for a broad swath of coastal Alaska after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake near Sand Point on July 16. The warning area ran from southwest of Homer across the Alaska Peninsula and out to Unimak Pass — which is just shy of Unalaska. Unalaska was never in the tsunami center’s warning zone, but the city still sent out an evacuation notice and sounded the tsunami sirens. The evacuation lasted a little over an hour.
Ben Knowles, the island’s fire chief, said there was some uncertainty when they got the initial warning from the state’s emergency operations center, which is run by the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
“It was a very confusing first 10 to 15 minutes,” Knowles told Unalaska City Council members at a recent meeting.
He said they received conflicting information.
“[The Alaska EOC] did put Unimak Pass, including Unalaska, in the warning zone,” Knowles said. “That is the notification that we were given. We did, on the initial briefing, notate that the national tsunami active map did not reflect the same information. However, [the state] still advised us that the warning was in place and they were talking to their partners.”
He said the city bases its notifications on information from the state’s EOC. So after they received the message, they sent out a mass Nixle alert — a notification from the public safety messaging system — telling people in the area to move to safety.
But as it turns out, the state was wrong. Unalaska was never part of the tsunami warning zone and didn’t need to evacuate.
Jeremy Zidek, a public information officer with the Alaska EOC, said someone from the center gave the city bad information.
“A representative from Unalaska asked if Unalaska was in the warning area, and the SEOC looked at a map, tried to understand where the geographical boundaries in the tsunami message are, and they responded, ‘yes.’ That was not, in fact, true,” Zidek said.
He said it can be a challenge to get emergency information out quickly and accurately, especially for such a big state.
He said this error came down to a geographic misunderstanding.
“The warning ended at Unimak Pass, which is short of Unalaska,” Zidek said. “So that is one of the issues that we have with the system there. They're identifying geographic areas and not communities, and so we have to do a little bit of translation on the fly to understand where those things are.”
Phantom alerts continued in the early morning hours
On top of that confusion, just hours after the tsunami warning was lifted, around 1 a.m. the next morning, some locals received another Nixle notification of a tsunami warning. Local tsunami sirens didn’t sound, but still, unsure of what to do, some people left their homes and headed to safety.
City Council member Shari Coleman, who works in the island’s bustling fishing industry, said she wants answers to the confusion.
“This was more than just waking people up in the middle of night,” Coleman said. “This was shutting down processes, evacuating people and stopping work.”
The city sent out subsequent alerts calling off the warning. But not long after those went out, another tsunami warning was issued to some Nixle subscribers. The city called that one off as well.
Fire Chief Knowles told council members that it was likely a carrier issue, but there had been some hangups getting to the root of the problem.
“We're getting a lot of finger pointing of, ‘it wasn't our problem, it's their fault. It wasn't our problem, it's their fault.’” Knowles said. “We're trying to work through that as quickly as we can.”
Coleman said she just wants the problem addressed.
“Finger point all you want. This needs to be fixed,” she told city officials at the council meeting.
According to City Manager Bil Homka, the issue involved the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s warning system, which is known as IPAWS, or the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. He said there was no failure at the local level but confirmed that it was likely a problem with certain mobile carriers.
He said the city is working with government account liaisons and Apple to identify the cause and create safeguards and solutions.
“It’s important to understand that emergency alerts are not generated or controlled solely at the local level—nor are they triggered by simply ‘pushing a button’ from here,” Homka said in the email. “The process involves a multi-agency system with state and federal protocols that are outside our direct control.”
Still, these mistakes can have serious consequences. When messaging is incorrect, people may not heed the warnings.
Zidek said he hopes that won’t happen. He said Alaskans should still take the warnings very seriously, and the center will continue to strive for accuracy when sending out emergency information.
“It's unfortunate that this mistake happened,” he said. “We're going to review our procedures, and we just want people to still respond when their local community issues evacuation orders and still heed those warnings that are coming out through the various different warning methods so they can get out of harm's way.”
Zidek said in the future, if an EOC representative is unsure about the boundaries of a tsunami warning, they will refer back to the Tsunami Warning Center’s original message so municipalities can help make a judgment locally.
Homka said if there is a threat to Unalaska, the city will sound the tsunami alarms.
“If you hear them, move to higher ground and follow your emergency plan. If you don’t hear them, it means we've confirmed there’s no local threat,” Homka said.
