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Conclusions: The committee cannot fully evaluate the effectiveness of the existing working
groups because of the ad hoc nature of most groups and the lack of documentation.
However, based on interviews and discussions with various local and state oficials, the
committee concludes that tsunami working groups are useful mechanisms for coordinating
and communicating the needs and abilities of at-risk communities to state emergency
management agencies and federal tsunami programs. These working groups also provide
fora for improving the dissemination of tsunami warning messages and for reviewing new
products. Most coastal states have tsunami working groups, but the level of activity varies
signiicantly among the groups. The committee observed that there is little to no interaction
between state working groups, thereby limiting the sharing of lessons learned and likely
creating redundant efforts and discussions.
Recommendation: The NTHMP should actively encourage all members to develop
and maintain strong tsunami working groups to help facilitate and coordinate tsunami
education, preparedness, and warning dissemination. The NTHMP should work to
communicate efforts of various working groups across the NTHMP and help disseminate
best practices. To ensure local efforts are evidence-based, state working groups should
actively encourage the involvement of social scientists trained in risk communication
regarding public education to increase knowledge about hazards and motivate
preparedness, tsunami risk, and emergency management.
Practicing Evacuation Procedures and Protocols
Tsunami evacuations will involve multiple actors making decisions in limited time that
will affect hundreds to thousands of individuals. Reviews of past tsunamis, such as the 1960
tsunami in Hilo, Hawaii (Johnston, 2003) and the June 14, 2005, event (Appendix F) indicate
that the lack of coordination among government agencies led to confusion among response
agencies and affected parties. To ensure that evacuations minimize unnecessary social and
economic interruptions, it is important for public safety and emergency management agen-
cies to practice and coordinate response procedures and protocols. Exercises present oppor-
tunities to foster communication and seamless operations, as formal response plans mean
little if agencies and affected parties fail to train and improve upon them (Sutton and Tierney,
2006). This section discusses the two primary approaches to improve response procedures
and protocols—table-top exercises to discuss evacuation and response coordination among
agencies and functional exercises to test agency procedures with a live simulation. In limited
situations, it may be useful to having the public practicing actual evacuation behavior as
discussed below.
Recent table-top and functional exercises, such as Paciic Peril 2006, Exercise Paciic Wave
08 (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 2008), Exercise Lantex 2009 (National
Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, 2009b), and functional exercises in 2009 in northern
California, Hawaii, and Washington have been conducted to test interagency communication
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