Thursday, September 21, 2006
Tucked back about a block from the edge of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, and not very far from the junction with the Glenn Highway, in Palmer, Alaska lies the most unlikely of unique Alaskan experiences. This is the home of the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center. This center was established in 1967 as a result of the devastation caused in Alaska by the great earthquake and tsunami of 1964. The great Alaskan earthquake of 1964 was the largest earthquake in North America and the second largest ever recorded.
As part of an international cooperative effort to save lives and protect property, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service operates two tsunami-warning centers. The Alaska Tsunami Warning Center ATWC) in Palmer, Alaska, serves as the regional Tsunami Warning Center for Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The other is in Hawaii.
This center’s objective is to detect, locate, and determine the magnitude of potentially dangerous earthquakes along the west coast of the United States and Canada, and to disseminate information regarding any probable tsunami activity. The center in Palmer offers free tours on Friday afternoons.
The Friday that I visited the tour began with an AV presentation given by one of the scientists on duty. The presenter was an oceanographer recently arrived from the east coast of the USA. (Scientists of many disciplines staff the center.) She still had a bit of acclimation to Alaskan geography to master but did an excellent job of explaining how quakes occur and how they can cause tsunamis.
She showed some interesting pictures and discussed information about the great quake, and subsequent tsunamis, that hit Alaska in 1964. She also showed some interesting pictures and discussed information regarding the recent tsunami in Asia.
As the tour continued she explained how data is collected at the source and how the data is transmitted from the source to the center for collection. She explained the current tsunami warning system and how the data is disseminated if the potential for a tsunami is thought to exist.
You might not be surprised to learn that everything is highly automated in this center, with alarms that ring if activity reaches a certain level. There are at least 2 IT technicians on site at all times to keep the systems up and running. (They were debugging some corrupted data coming in from a particular satellite feed the day I was there.) In addition to the incoming data being recorded to several electronic mediums, believe it or not, every quake is logged, with a pen, in an official logbook. The answer to my inquiry as to why this is done considering that there are so many redundant systems in place in the center was pretty simple. I was told that since the center operates 7/24/365 it is easier for a new shift to scan the written activity log when they take over than to review the tapes and other media. Seems the old way may still have some valuable advantages in this highly automated environment.
Perhaps the most interesting, and most surprising thing of all may be that there are small quakes occurring all along the west coast, and particularly in Alaska, literally daily. There was a 2.0 magnitude quake near the Denali Visitor’s Center the day I visited the center. There have been several just this week including a 6.3 magnitude quake that occurred near Talkeetna on Tuesday. Most of these quakes are not even felt by ordinary citizens.
If you would like to monitor the west coast and Alaska quake activity from the Tsunami Center, an RSS feed is offered or you can simply check http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/ periodically to see what is going on.
For a very interesting and totally unique Alaskan experience take advantage of one of the free Friday tours at the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska.
