Hi everyone
this is Elizabeth Rohring with the
National Sea Grant program I want to
thank you for joining us for the fifth
installment in our webinar series we
were highlighting our NOAA Sea Grant
liaisons these liaisons integrate NOAA
and NOAA funded research and its end
users end users needs by connecting Sea
Grant Network and its expertise with
NOAA funded science products and
services if you are interested in
learning more about these programs these
positions please feel free to get in
touch with me elizabeth.rohring@noaa.gov and as my Sea Grant colleagues know
I've been threatening this for close to
six months now we should be having a
competition out soon we're going to be
looking for two more liaison positions
and we welcome our NOAA colleagues to
work with the sea grant programs to see
if there any that would be of interest
with that I would love to introduce dr.
Carrie Garrison-Laney she is the tsunami
hazard specialists with Washington Sea
Grant at the University of Washington
and a liaison to the Pacific Marine
Environmental labs NOAA Center for
tsunami research in Seattle Carrie's work
includes a research on tsunami geology
and tsunami modeling she also works
collaboratively Pacific... sorry she
also works collaboratively with the
Washington Department of Natural
Resources and the Washington emergency
management division working on outreach
materials and giving outreach trainings
and talks so with that please welcome
Dr. Carrie Garrison-Laney take it away
great thanks so much Elizabeth I'm so
pleased to be able to share some of my
experiences and observations from a trip
I took last November to Japan to some
areas that were devastated in 2011 and
Tohoku earthquake and also to meet with
some international collaborators working
on a lot of the same things I work on
and so but but before I get in
- talking about Japan I wanted to give a
kind of brief overview of my position
and some of the other things I work on
so on my title is across the top there
it's long it's long title but before I
talk about what I do I wanted to
highlight the fact that my position is
actually shared it's a 50% share of
position with Meg Chad the ocean
acidification specialist who kicked off
this Sea Grant liaison series last year
and we are we she calls us the
two-headed beast and so I just say
together we make one
okay so my my work kind of falls into
two categories on research and outreach
and I will be showing you some examples
of both of these just briefly before I
talk about Japan but my research
includes like Elizabeth mentioned work
on paleo tsunami deposits and also
establishing ages for these and
identifying potential sources which also
can include testing those with
site-specific tsunamis source modeling
from various places I've also done a
little bit of work on site-specific
tsunami modeling incorporating different
sea level rise scenarios to see how sea
level rise will affect tsunami hazards
in the future I've got a cabaret ssin
right now with Tohoku University on
tsunamis sediment sediment transport at
one of my sites here in Washington we're
really excited about being able to
continue that work to some other places
from in Washington and along Cascadia
because tsunamis move a lot of sediment
around and it's important to have an
idea what those impacts might be for us
in the future and then I'm just starting
work on two different NSF coastlines and
people projects one of them is setting
up a research network and the other
Cascadia research network and the other
one is working on creating geo
narratives so that the history of
Cascadia and also subduction zones
science and trying to really capture
what we what we know pretty well and
where the uncertainties are
you
I also do quite a bit of out what it
called outreach er advisory and got just
started this year a working on a
maritime guidance pilot project in
Washington State and we're trying to put
together equal a series of products to
help the port of Bellingham know how to
respond in a tsunami and it's the first
of what should be several projects in
that vein I also as Elizabeth mentioned
to a lot of collaborative outreach with
Washington emergency management division
and the Geological Survey I I also look
sorry about that I also am connected to
researchers at University in Washington
the US Geological Survey has been office
as a group of University of Washington
and also people who work on tsunami
hazards research and also Emergency
Management from all along the west coast
and a Canada and Japan and in last
August I joined the n-th MP which is
national screen on the hazard mitigation
program and I joined the mapping and
modeling subgroup so there are
activities involved with going attending
those meetings and kind of carrying out
some of the objectives of that group
so just a brief kind of encapsulation of
some of those things I just talked about
one place I've done quite a bit of work
is Discovery Bay and you can see up here
in the upper right Discovery Bay the bay
along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and
in Washington and this is a tsunami
central for Washington State there are
at least nine tsunami deposits which you
can see on the left the it's they've
kind of lighter layers of very fine sand
and silt in tidal marsh deposits and so
this this is a this hole is a pit I dug
in the marsh and you can't really dig
much further down because if you think
those up with water but you can core
down and there's all these Konami
deposits but one big question we have is
are these from Cascadia only or do we
have other sources for these in the on
the map you can see where the Cascadia
subduction zone is offshore and this is
the tsunami source we are most concerned
about but we also have all these other
faults that are Criss crossing the Puget
lowland and we know that some of these
have tsunami jack potential we know this
you have a fault created a tsunami about
a thousand years ago and some of these
other faults we suspect are capable of
producing something on these and are
still considered active some of the work
I've done has really focused on
narrowing the ages of the tsunami
deposits so this plot on the lower right
here is showing probability density
functions for radiocarbon ages for the
youngest six tsunami deposits at
Discovery Bay and some of them aren't
dated very well and that just requires a
lot of work a lot of work collecting
specimens that are really going to
produce the best radiocarbon age
bed - it got a question mark there
because it's unclear whether that's from
Cascadia or another source its
radiocarbon age doesn't quite match up
with anything that we know about
happening on Cascadia and there's no
evidence out on the counter coast for an
event of Washington for an event of that
age but if this is interesting to you
get in touch with me because I can talk
about this for a long time but for now
I'm going to move on and talk about some
the other things I work on um these are
some images from the Washington tsunami
roadshow which is a multi-day outreach
event that I work on with Washington
emergency management division Washington
Geological Survey partners from The
Weather Service and we go around to
towns from all our outer Pacific coasts
of Washington and talk to them about
seeing on resources and why do we have
tsunamis and how do we know we have them
and what a warning power warnings
generated and what are the different
kinds of warnings mean and what actions
should people take before during and
after tsunami because of so much
variation in Washington coastline you
saw in that previous slide that our
waterways not just specific coasts but
also the Puget Sound all the sailors
need code for what we all call the inner
coast of Washington we've actually now
divided the Roadshow into two groups
Pacific Coast and inner Coast and so
starting this year we're going to have
two separate roadshows just because the
needs and those two different areas are
pretty different
another thing that I worked on with
Murray ugly at the NOAA Center for so
many research was creating this is a
front and back of a one-pager that sort
of highlights a lot of the work that
tsunami Research Center does and also
kind of puts it into context with a
greater NOAA tsunami effort and this was
this was important to create because
there wasn't really something that you
could just hand to a visitor or an
elected official saying this is what
this is what this group does and this
was the benefits this group brings
another thing Murray and I worked on was
a redesign of tsunami no egg of which
was an existing website was very out of
date and had lots of broken links and
what this website does is tries to
organize the whole the Greater Noah
tsunami program which includes lots of
other pieces not just what n CTR does
but if anyone who's ever spent time
looking through all of the many many
NOAA tsunami related websites has
certainly found that there's lots and
lots of information there and kind of
knowing how all the pieces fit together
can be can be challenging even for those
who work in the tsunami world so this
website was an attempt to kind of
organize some of that information and so
it's a launching point to for further
information where you can go I also
mentioned the maritime guidance work
that I'm just now starting with and this
is a cover slide from the talk that I
gave with Alex dulcis Mascola from the
Washington Geological Survey and this is
a still
from tsunami animation produced by the
Washington Geological Survey using
tzunami modeling output from NCT R and
this this shows this really kind of
captures the the complexity of the
Washington waterways and why we're
working on maritime guidance and also
why we split into two different you know
groups for outreach focus I should
mention that I also participate in a
tsunami workgroup which we've also
divided into a Pacific Coast and inner
Coast because the concerns and folks of
two groups are quite different
but we're the beginning pilot projects
going to be up here in Bellingham
Bellingham Bay and this is a Cascadia
tsunami you can see like kind of
starting to move into a straight here
but we also have to be concerned with
tsunamis um particularly from Alaska and
also the potential tsunamis generated I
feel about crustal faults in the lowland
this is this is probably this is a pilot
study creating a series of products that
will be the basis for a lot more work
that we do advising the maritime
community because there are different
sources there's there's different
amounts of time before the tsunami
affects particular areas so in
Bellingham they've got an hour and
fifteen minutes or so before a Cascadia
tsunami will reach them but if there's
an Alaska tsunami on the way they'll
have over three hours to react and so
and knowing what the tsunamis going to
do in all these different places
requires a really high-resolution
modeling so
we're working to try to give people
excuse me the best product that we can
possibly give them
now onto the trip to Japan this trip
came about because last year at the
close of a big nsf-funded m9 project
which was a University of Washington
project that brought together people who
did Cascadia related researching in many
different fields is basically looking at
what would be the impact of a magnitude
9 earthquake to building
coastal areas tsunami landslides
liquefaction you know everything at the
end of that meeting we hosted an
international workshop to bring together
people from different places mostly
Americans and Japanese and Chilean to
kind of start some collaborations
between University Washington in those
groups and I took them out into the mud
to look at seeing all the deposits and
they loved it they had a lot of fun and
as a result they invited us to go to
Japan last November we visited them at
the aridity
then for the International Research
Institute of disaster science which
about Tohoku University and that I think
sendai sendai north east of Tokyo and
then died the Sendai plain was really
impacted by the tsunami in 2011 but
aridity
right after the Tohoku earthquake and
it's really focused on reducing future
impacts of disasters we attended two
different conferences during this trip
one was the world both eyes forum which
is a forum that that is collaborating in
the spirit of kind of learning
past disasters to prevent loss of life
and improved resiliency moving forward
and this was the second world both side
forum and I think they'll plant they
plan to continue these every two years
and have them different locations so
both sides is a Japanese word that that
kind of has captured this idea that you
can prevent future disasters or not you
can't prevent the disasters but you can
prevent the human impact of disasters
with learning from what's happened in
the past and so Bo prevention side
disaster prevent of disaster so the
Americans wanted to call it the bond
side forum but it was not Banzai was per
se during the world both sides forum
they had an exhibition hall which was
pretty amazing these are just a couple
of the exhibits from that it was it was
sort of an amazing array of high-tech
solution to post disaster situations and
on the right you can see the box here
this hexagonal box that allows you to
produce this entire toilet in the
aftermath of a disaster but also
equipment for generating from water
electricity drone capability food
anything anything that you can think of
hi-tech was was represented there in
addition to world both side form there
was also another conference called the
AI West Contra
which looks like he might have gotten
chopped off but if it's a collaboration
that started in 2000 and it's the whole
concept started in 2005 after the
cratons Indonesian earthquake and
tsunami and then Tokyo University joined
up with Indonesian partners in 2005 and
since then they've been meeting annually
so it's mostly groups from Indonesia and
Thailand but also and the Japanese that
also people from Australia New Zealand
attended so this is the first year any
Americans attended the conference I
think and this was great because it this
was a lot we we got to see a lot of the
same people that visited us in the
previous March this is the lobby
IRA's during one of the breaks in the
conference and there's lots of really
amazing displays of some of the work
that they do and my favorite was the
disaster mitigation kimono which is a
kimono that's printed with all kinds all
the information that you need to know to
how to respond and prepare for
earthquake and tsunami disasters but
maybe a kimono might not be the most
applicable to us in the US but they also
had lots of other products that we're
thinking about adopting and maybe
copying one of them had a few different
bandanas with lots of good information
printed on them and it really kind of
seen the quality and variety of outreach
materials that I rideth has developed
really kind of inspired a lot of us to
think about what kinds of things we can
start to work on to use on them on our
coast here
this is showing part of the Sendai plain
following the earthquake in March 11th
of 2011 and this is this red area shows
the inundation of by the tsunami on the
Sendai plain and it the scale here
showing as five kilometers inundation
and there was also it was also further
even up to ten kilometers in some places
up river channel and a lot of you know
plenty about this event but just some
statistics for you it was a fourth
largest earthquake ever recorded in the
history of seismology but the largest in
Japan many deaths mostly from tsunami
the maximum tsunami height measured was
over 40 meters in yaku ten kilometers
tsunami travelled inland rivers
definitely the costly if disaster ever
in history over 200 billion US dollars
worth and and then of course the
Fukushima nuclear disaster this was
considered to be a thousand-year tsunami
and tsunami deposits left behind this
you know by the tsunami look very
similar they're very similar in their
extent geographic extent and also
thickness to deposits attributed to the
Geoghan earthquake in the year 869 AD so
there was Jeff definitely geologic
evidence that this area could experience
significant tsunami inundation although
the official hazard forecast for a lot
of Tohoku coasts did not predict a
tsunami above this side
one of the places that we went to as
part of them our field trips at Tokyo
University put together for us was a
trip to one of the elementary schools in
the Sendai plain our Hana elementary
school and this is the school it was
integrated during the tsunami and
there's a sign here that shows the
height of the water here and now it is
preserved as a museum this is a photo
taken during the tsunami showing people
had evacuated to the roof all the
schoolchildren and many people in the
community surrounding the school
evacuated to the roof and they were on
the roof partly because of the decision
of principal kalimera who a couple of
years previously had made the decision
instead of evacuating to their brand-new
gymnasium to have everyone go up to the
roof and they work on the roof for 24
hours following the tsunami they washed
they watched their entire neighborhood
be swept away and their gymnasium was
also swept away so this this place is
you know while while it represents
tremendous devastation there was there
was of the good part about having this
evacuation plan and carrying out this
plan was that everyone survived
this is the inside of the first level so
they've reinforced the building and now
it's a tsunami in out the museum to the
tsunami but they've left parts of it as
is and this is just another view from
outside on the right is an image showing
reconstruction of what the community
looked like before the tsunami they got
residents that live there to come in and
actually create recreate this
three-dimensional map what the
neighborhood area and the area looked
like before the tsunami these are some
images on the left that's a photo of
debris that was inside the school
following tsunami on the center's the
ubiquitous Japanese tsunami evacuation
sign they see all over the place and
then on the right some damage to the
exterior of the building
so all from the second level you can
look out to where the ocean is and
you'll see that there's some few trees
standing if you are standing closer to
them you'll notice that all the limbs
are ripped off up to a certain level
that shows how high the tsunami was and
also I wanted to point out that this was
actually a fairly dense forest before
the tsunami
now we're going to go look at this area
right here tsunami memorial is and we
were just right here at our Hama this is
a view from Google Earth looks a little
much little pixelated but it's showing
on the tsunami memorial and the seawall
the new seawall and here is the female
memorial on the left and the height of
the memorial shows the height of the
water and then on the right here this is
Randy Levesque a tsunami modeler from
University of Washington and he's
standing on the sea wall which was was
raised to a higher level and it has been
and here's the tsunami memorial over
here on the right and the tsunami
memorial is still taller than six foot
for Randy on top of newly raised seawall
so the idea for the new seawall is that
it will protect against more common more
frequent smaller tsunamis but still
wouldn't be tall enough to protect
against 15 I mean like they have in 2011
you
so
after
after the tsunami in 2011 live
development of what's called the Sendai
framework for disaster risk reduction I
don't have time to really talk about
that in detail right now but it was
basically a big plans to how to respond
how to rebuild how to increase
resilience moving forward and part of
the build back better rebuilding you can
see in Sendai it's underway right now
from this cross-section so we were just
over here what they're calling coastal
embankment are really called sea wall
you can see some of the plans that
they're putting into effect so the
largest scale tsunami is going to
penetrate inland pretty far but smaller
ones won't go quite as far and so
between the coastal embankment disaster
prevention forest which they are
replanting that for us to try to
dissipate tsunami energy you can see
lots of small trees everywhere that has
been newly planted they've also created
evacuation hills they're building a
elevated road and there are also
evacuation facilities sprinkled all
around the Sendai plain and let's look
at this in map view so on the right you
can see this is some of the build back
better Sendai in action here there is
this area which will likely be inundated
in most tsunami events this disaster
risk area and what they did there was
they basically relocated anyone who
lived in that area to fard
to areas further inland and trace that
with the orange arrows that shows some
of the areas where people got
located to these relocations were our
mandatory and also financially
subsidized by the Japanese government
along the coast they built these green
circles our evacuation Hills and this is
a cross-section of evacuation Hill and
they utilize concrete from debris
leftover tsunami sediment and also one
thing that we found kind of
mind-boggling was mountains and they are
actually blasting mountains further
inland and trucking the sediment down
into the Sendai area and also other
parts along the Tohoku coast to raise up
the ground level another thing I wanted
to point out here is all these purple
triangles are evacuation facilities this
is the elevated road that I mentioned
and a long elevator row there are places
when there scares that you can evacuate
up to it I'll show you some pictures of
some of this in action here this is one
of the evacuation towers that will built
many of them have an enclosed area which
is full of supplies things they might
need one thing that happened after the
tsunami is some people who evacuated and
got away from the tsunami actually died
of exposure overnight because it was
very cold and snowing and people who
especially people who have been caught
up in water we're in really bad shape
after the tsunami so the idea was to get
a lot of these evacuation facilities
full of supplies to keep people
comfortable and also bad sanitation
products and many things like that
this is what I see all around the Sendai
plain the building up the ground level
and there's heavy equipment everywhere
and this is eight and a half years after
the event so the work that's being done
there is still definitely in progress
and we the Americans were completely
surprised and kind of overwhelmed by the
scale of some of the projects that were
going on it's pretty pretty amazing this
is a residential area that is now six
meters higher than it used to be so on
the Left these are new residents was
that where the property is subsidized by
the government and the building on the
right is part of the emergency housing
for those who lost their homes
more heavy equipment dump trucks full of
sediment this is a view from top of the
our Hana elementary school and on the
right you can see where the raised road
is being built in the ground levels
being increased
and this is a Google Earth view of the
raised road so it's not it's not open
yet well it wasn't open when we were
there in November but eventually we'll
be open it'll serve as a barrier also a
place to escape and I mentioned that
there are stairs and many places and
allow people to to run up to the top
there another site that we visited was
not I should I should just back up and
say that our Hama elementary school was
it was devastating for the people who
survived to watch their neighborhood be
destroyed but they did all survived but
then we went to ohkawa elementary school
to northeast of where our home and
school is and there is a very different
story really tragic situation and so a
cholera mentary school is about four
kilometres inland from the ocean along
the Kitakami River and the school site
is located near this hill I'll show you
in the next picture and also a new
bridge and here's the school site now
the school was completely inundated by
the tsunami you can see the proximity to
hillside that was not in dated and it's
a it's really kind of a hard to
understand what happened there this book
picture will inset picture is a book
about this event this school being
inundated
most of the students and load and uh the
two most of students that was still
there and the teachers that were still
there died
many parents came and picked up their
kids and took them away but the kids and
teachers who stayed so a variety of
reasons did not begin to evacuate until
50 minutes after the earthquake and
there were tsunami warnings coming in
there were many people who were trying
to convince the assistant principal who
was in charge that day because the
principal wasn't there that they needed
to evacuate to higher ground but for
whatever reason he like psychologically
did not accept that there was really a
hazard part of it might be because they
had had a tsunami warning just two days
before one of four shocks or the event
and that he didn't turn into anything
and so but part of it too was just sort
of a feeling that they weren't in any
danger when you're at the site there you
definitely don't even feel like you're
anywhere near the ocean so it was a was
a really difficult place to visit and it
was a really difficult story to hear
about them but I'd like to think that we
can take something away from from what
happened the tragedy that happened there
and just keep keep remembering to
instill in you know in outreach
activities having a good plan and
practicing it to prevent something like
this from happening another site
visited which was northeast of Oak
Hollow elementary school was the town of
Minami Sanriku and this is what but not
all the low-lying areas of Minami
Sanriku looked like Oh after the tsunami
and I've circled a couple of buildings
here that we'll look at pictures of the
first one is this one in the center here
this is the tectonic I can Events Center
there was an event going on during
during the earthquake there was about
over 300 senior citizens were in the
event center sewing event and once the
earthquake happened a lot of people
wanted to leave the building and they
wanted to evacuate but the person who is
in charge of hazards for the building
from the event got the other staff to
physically keep people from leaving and
they were able to save everyone everyone
had to go up to a roof the tsunami
inundated all the way up to the fourth
floor you can see debris hanging out of
the of the upper windows and also two
dogs were saved so really good these are
some this is photo from outside the
building now now this building is a ruin
it's still standing there going to leave
it standing but it's not as examined up
here you can see the inundation level on
the building nearby
where that is this is a photo on a sign
in a new shopping area which is
basically catering to tourists passing
through this area showing what the area
looked like after the scene and this
building right here the crisis
management department building was
completely innovated and I tried to
translate some of this but this is the
crisis management building a couple of
years after I think this is from 2013 or
2014 but this is what's left of the
building and then nearby behind that in
the area behind where this building is
over here they're building a memorial
park with a fine showing what the plans
of the memorial park are going to look
like it's going to include this memorial
park is also an evacuation hill and just
a place of remembrance
now the disaster ability the crisis
management building this is what it
looks like now so the river has been
completely hardened with these new
levees and we saw this all over all up
and down the coastline was not just sea
walls but also levees built along the
river and this is kind of gives you an
idea of how much higher they're raising
so the ground level here this building
the only people that were in this
building that survived were people who
actually climbed up the cellphone tower
here and then you can see the Memorial
Park and evacuation Hill in the
background there's another view of some
of the levees being built along the yata
River that was also in the image we just
saw the scale of the engineering
projects and some of the attendees is
pretty hard to take in it's incredible
and we know billions of dollars have
been poured into these communities and
some of these projects that have been
done we're not necessarily agreed upon
by the citizens so there's definitely
some lessons being learned there this is
another
view from this shopping area that shows
the Memorial Park being built in the
background and vacua shin hill and this
is a Easter Island statue that's a
replacement from Chile a replacement of
a gift from Chile that was given to them
originally in 1960 following the Chilean
tsunami which caused a couple of
fatalities and minami sanriku but
because their Easter Island statue was
washed away in the tsunami they got a
new one here in the Memorial Park and
then this inside is just showing of
while we were there we all got this
emergency alert and we were all scared
but cuz it's in Japanese we couldn't
read it but we had some Japanese
speakers with us luckily he told us so
it's just a test so that was that was a
I guess that's a good is a good idea to
have these in multiple religions okay
now back to the Sendai plane and this is
this is the northernmost part of the
Sendai plain every 10 here is showing
some evacuation something whether it's a
building that's been designated as
evacuation building and built to
standards - it's dancing on the or an
evacuation power or evacuation hill or
elevated road they've definitely got
this place covered and then and I also
wanted to note that the scale on this is
four kilometers
you
now here's part of the coast of
Washington showing all of our evacuation
facilities but there's only one only one
vertical evacuation facility in the
entire entire continent of North America
so this is just showing part of selfless
Washington grey Harbor
this is tsunami inundation modeling by
NCT our ever of a large Cascadia event
and one thing to take away from this is
that these peninsulas are entirely over
washed five tsunami there's only a few
areas of higher ground that are not
inundated and you can see by the scale
here we're talking up to 60 almost 60 or
on almost 60 feet in some places and the
scale on this map is different than the
last mount this is a 10 kilometer scale
so you can see that the distance is
required by people to travel to get out
of inundation zone it's too hard for
them to make it out in along the coast
here people might have 15 or 20 minutes
before tsunami arrives on earthquake and
so vertical evacuation is going to be
really critical and to stabilize here
and aside from just the year-round
residents here we also get a huge influx
of tourists in the summer months so an
extra hundred thousand people might be
in this area in a summer month and so
educating not just year-round residents
but also visitors what to do in the
event of a always a big challenge it's
in the big challenge especially in
Washington
okay so start to wrap things up here
made kind of a comparison of some of the
actions taking in Japan and whether they
apply the US so some of the things that
I think are not going to work here in
the US on prohibiting construction in
certain places or subsidizing relocation
of people out of inundation zone
probably not going to work too well in
the u.s. there we do have some tribes in
Washington that have either started to
move or planning to move up to higher
ground if they have places available to
go I don't think we are very likely to
build sea walls or harden our river
banks with levees and we also don't have
our schools built to the seismic
standards that Japan as a Japan Japanese
schools are built to very high highs m'q
standards and they are places where
people have been taught to go to
evacuate and we certainly don't have
that in the u.s. in fact most of many of
the schools in Washington are likely to
have failure structural failures in an
earthquake let alone withstand a tsunami
evacuation structures I'd like to see
the coast of Washington how this kind of
density that the coast of Sendai plane
has in terms of accusation structures
one has been built the Acosta elementary
school one has been funded Shoalwater
Bay tribe has one funded that they are
either going to begin construction
really soon or they already have and
then others to follow we hope and
education and outreach I think we I
think we've done a good job but it's
sort of an ongoing we need to keep on
doing that ongoing effort and then
practicing evacuation drills I think you
need to keep doing
so we've got some challenges we've got
cultural challenges like I've had this
happen over and over again where someone
will come up to me at the end of the
talk and say well I've lived here my
whole life and sitting my parents it was
never had a thing on me so why should I
worry about this we've got what to do
and a lot of these coastal communities
in Washington have are financially
depressed and so there's a lot of
competition for their resources and also
on capacity whether or not anyone has
the time to be to be able to put the
time into things like going after
funding for vertical evacuation and then
are both side knowledge to take away
from this things that things that no
observations from stories we heard or
things that I've read it really helped
when people either had experience or how
the relative who had experience or the
tsunami and there was countless stories
of you know people who would say well
what my grandmother told me they had to
go up to this point on Hill so that's
where I went people who survived had
plans and practice them and people who
survived didn't delay evacuating people
who wait it around or went down into the
innovation zone to take grab their
belongings to go pick up a relative a
lot of times those people did not make
it out
people who survived didn't underestimate
the hazard and get bigoted tsunamis
fairly regularly in Japan and a novel
they're logging more small and so when
you hear tsunami might think oh well
we've been through that and it wasn't so
bad
vertical evacuation was critical and
finally the money there was a big influx
of money into a lot of these devastated
areas but how defendant was not really
agreed upon so I think we need I think
it's really important for communities to
have plans what to do when some of that
money starts coming in how to spend it
and I know we're getting short on time
but there's lots more work to do I think
I've touched on a lot of these things
already during the talk so with that I
will stop and see if there are any
question
okay thank you so much carry on this is
Erin from the know Central Library and I
do not see any questions so far but
someone submitted a comment they say
humbling report grateful to carrier for
the in-depth information and opportunity
to attend
great thank you this was I've been
studying tsunami deposits for over 20
years and I feel like I feel like I
learned a lot and took a lot away from
this trip and yeah it was it was it was
really in a lot of ways one of the most
influential things I've ever done I was
going and seeing seeing the recovery and
talking to people about about it it gave
me lots of ideas for how how we can kind
of use some of their experience to
improve our outcomes and future and then
we do have some questions chuckling and
now so someone says can you speak more
to the impacts of Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear plant incident and what lessons
on considerations we can learn from that
yes so I did not get to go to Fukushima
myself but there were a couple of people
from University of Washington who went
to have a tour they didn't get to go
into the plant but the the main I think
that underestimation of what the tsunami
might look like how high the tsunami
might be was a really big problem for
Fukushima their seawall was not nearly
high enough to prevent the tsunami from
coming in and and then they also there
was also some issues with how they had
set up their power systems in the
basement of the plant so
I could refer you to either Dan Abramson
at University of Washington or land
gyein from University of Washington
because they went and they were able to
you know kind of get into some other
more in-depth questions so email me if
you wish and I realized I didn't put my
email address anywhere on here but I'm
pretty easy to find on the Washington
Sea Grant webpage
okay great another question we had those
Japan have a regular source of funding
for mitigating impacts we we had a lot
of questions for our Japanese colleagues
about money and what one thing well we
were overwhelmed with how much money is
being spent in these areas that were
just devastated and and we had questions
about where did this where'd the money
come from I think the majority of the
money came from the government and we
also had questions about why is all of
this protective and preventive stuff
being built in area that just had their
large event and why not focus more of
that in areas that are expected to have
a large event and you know we got a lot
of different answers about when's the
money come from and who decides what to
do and where to do it and it might my
takeaway from that is a lot of it was
just by direct awards from the
government to contractors who went in
and did what they wanted to often
without a lot of input from the local
communities so I I don't think we'll see
that I don't think I don't think the
coastal areas of us are going to see
that level of input of federal money
following event but I do think it's
important for them to realize that money
will come in and and have ideas for how
to how to spend it alright another
question we have here what's your
opinion about the pros and cons of
channelizing rivers we some of the some
of the tsunami modelers that looked at
those channelized rivers with hardened
banks and wondered if that might
actually enhance a tsunami and
penetration into the interior
these are I don't have the answers to
those questions I think there's a lot of
problems with doing that I think it
could it could probably focus tsunami
energy and then there's also the whole
host of other environmental problems and
sediment not being able to move around
in the environment there so I don't I'm
not actually convinced that that's a
good idea
but most of the places that were dead
really devastated not most but a fair
number of the were up Twitter channel so
I do understand you know kind of wanting
to have a feeling of well that were
protected from that that will happen
again but probably not something we
would ever want to do in the Pacific
Northwest another question we have did
warning times vary for the impacted
areas I know that warning warnings were
received in some places and then in
other places where power was out they
did not receive warnings but people were
getting warnings in other ways not just
seeing you know not just sirens but
people were getting warnings in other
ways and are from ohkawa elementary
school there were a couple of civil
servants who had a vehicle with a
microphone on the or a loudspeaker on
the top who drove around and you know he
told people verbally tsunami is coming
get to high ground and even though they
drove past the Okawa elementary school
and saw all students and teachers
standing outside the building not not
not evacuating that still didn't have an
impact but so they said they definitely
didn't get they didn't get their
warnings through all of the ways that
they might have gotten them in that low
K
but but still warning for coming true in
other ways you know over radios and
emergency I'm going to sit like the
emergency warning that we got when we
were visiting Minami Sanriku okay and I
think we have time for one more question
so Kari mentioned that some of the
communities didn't approve of the
measures that have been implemented
after the earthquake and tsunami is
there any indication on how that
feedback was received or acted upon if
at all I think I can't that's a that's a
really complicated issue because there
was a lot of very variation from
community to community I know that there
was a lot of people in Minami Sanriku
that were not pleased or did not like
the plans that were implemented there
and I know that there was pushback in
some places that resulted in some
compromises like the city of Kesennuma
which is a little bit further north of
Minami Sanriku actually have their
seawall has the highway on top of it so
it's not quite as obvious of a feature
in the landscape but that's there
there's a lot to dig into to answer that
question and and maybe maybe that's a
separate maybe that's a separate webinar
but contact me if you wish and I can
point into some more resources to help
answer that question more fully
so that's all questions that we have for
now so I can turn things back over to
you Elizabeth
you
okay and alright so if there was nothing
else than Carrie I thank you very much
for this presentation and thank you
everyone who attended yes thanks
everyone
thanks Carrie
