Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- When news of a big earthquake hits in the middle of the night, it takes geophysicist Bruce Turner five minutes to fumble for his beeper, throw on a coat, scrape ice off his car windshield, drive a mile to work and transmit a tsunami alert from the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.

These few minutes, essential to communities in a tsunami's path, will no longer be wasted on commuting when the center goes to round-the-clock staffing in April.

A portion of $24 million appropriated by Congress in May to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will allow 24-hour staffing, seven days a week at the nation's two tsunami warning centers, here and at Ewa Beach, Hawaii.

The federal government allocated the money in response to the earthquake and ensuing tsunami in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004. At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared in 11 Indian Ocean countries.

The 24-hour staffing will shave off the three to four minutes it takes scientists to rise from bed and drive to the center before issuing a tsunami alert in response to an earthquake, said Paul Whitmore, director of the warning center in Alaska.

"Rather than responding from dead sleep, we'll already have people there," Whitmore said. "We're definitely better off this way."

Earthquake alerts roust scientists from bed several times a week, and all staff members are required to live no more than five minutes from work in order to respond quickly.

The Alaska center registers about 400-500 earthquake alarms per year from around the world and lets safety officials know whether those temblors could displace enough water to trigger a dangerous tsunami.

Starting in April a minimum of two people will be inside the center in Palmer at all times. It's currently open on weekdays from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. AST. The number of positions has risen to 15 from 6.5 to fill the additional hours.

The center has been scrambling since August to train the new employees. And aside from overseeing its home state, the West Coast and British Columbia, its responsibilities have expanded to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast.

"It has been tumultuous here," said Turner, who has worked at the Alaska warning center and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii over the past 23 years.

In Hawaii, scientists live in a cluster of homes on the parched plain of Ewa Beach on the island of Oahu, about 500 feet from the Pacific center. It takes on-call staffers about two minutes to run or bike to the office from their homes after their beepers sound, said Stuart Weinstein, the center's assistant director.

The Hawaii center also will go to round-the-clock operation this spring. Since May, it has increased its staff from eight people to 13 and still needs to fill two more spots.

Its responsibility also has branched out from the Pacific basin to include the Caribbean. The center is also working with the Japan Meteorological Agency to monitor the Indian Ocean until a warning system is installed in the region.

NOAA will spend most of the federal money on 39 buoys with pressure recorders anchored to the sea floor that can detect tsunamis of less than a half-inch in height. Half-inch tsunami waves in mid-ocean can be compressed into towering surges of water after reaching shallower coastal areas.

The buoys relay information to tsunami warning centers via satellite. NOAA plans to raise the number of buoys in the Pacific Ocean to 32 from the current 10 and add seven in the Atlantic, which has none, by 2007.

But improved warning systems won't make a difference unless people know where to seek shelter, a tsunami expert said.

"If we're talking about saving lives, we're really talking about preparing local communities," said Harry Yeh, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Even before the Indian Ocean disaster, scientists from the Palmer center were helping tsunami and earthquake-prone communities in Alaska outline clear and well-publicized evacuation plans.

Longtime residents of the nation's most seismically active state are familiar with proper earthquake and tsunami protocol. But newcomers and tens of thousands of summer tourists often aren't aware of the dangers.

"Unless you've been through it, you don't really think about it," said Jennifer Austin of Seward, who was 8 years old when a magnitude 9.2 earthquake shook Alaska on March 27, 1964.

The Good Friday earthquake was the largest ever recorded in North America and still keeps longtime Alaskans on guard. The temblor and ensuing tsunami killed 115 people in Alaska.

"The older people who lived through the 1964 earthquake are more aware," said Austin, Seward's assistant fire chief.

Alaska's curving southern shoreline traces a volatile subduction zone along the borders of two tectonic plates. Volcanic eruptions and numerous earthquakes, most of them small, shake the southern section of the state as the Pacific plate slides beneath the North American plate at a rate of several centimeters per year.

Fire officials in Seward, a coastal town about 80 miles south of Anchorage, have marked a tsunami evacuation route with blue and white signs leading from the beach park along Resurrection Bay, through the small downtown, to the hospital near the foot of Mount Marathon.

Seward officials say their plans can't depend too heavily on outside help in the hours and days immediately following a catastrophe.

Tsunami waves after the 1964 earthquake destroyed bridges connecting the town to the highway system and the community of 3,000 has been cut off by avalanches in recent winters.

"Our (tsunami) plan assumes we can't leave Seward and that Anchorage wouldn't be able to respond for 72-84 hours because they'd be dealing with their own problems," said Seward Fire Chief David Squires. "You must plan in every community to be on your own."

Alaska's seismic restlessness threatens those beyond its borders as well. A tsunami radiating from the mountainous southcentral region and the Aleutian Islands can pose a huge danger to communities thousands of miles away.

Tsunami waves triggered by the 1964 quake killed 16 people in California. And in 1946, a tsunami spawned by a magnitude 8.1 earthquake off Unimak Island killed 159 people in Hilo, Hawaii.