Tsunami advisory lifted across the Central Coast and all Southern California shorelines
Dave Alley
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.- A Tsunami Advisory that had been placed across the California coastline for several hours was lifted early Wednesday afternoon for San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, as well as the rest of Southern California.
Also on Wednesday afternoon, San Luis Obispo County also cancelled an Evacuation Warning for areas near the bay in Los Osos.
The wide scale Tsunami Advisory was made by the National Tsunami Warning Center on Tuesday following a massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck near the far eastern Russia coastline.
In San Luis Obispo County, the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) was quickly put into action once the Tsunami Advisory went into effect.
“Once we got the notification from the state that they were upgrading the Tsunami Watch to a Tsnuami Advisory, the County EOC was activated,” said Anita Konopa, San Luis Obispo County Emergency Services Coordinator. “It was activated at a fairly low level, but County OES staff was in there, as well as, law enforcement, fire, Public Works and EMS, just watch the situation and ensure that we were up to date on what was going on. The state was holding hourly conference calls with all of the operational partners on the coast, and providing us information on what they were receiving from the National Tsunami Warning Center, as well as the information they were getting from their tsunami playbooks. The tsunami playbooks are basically information that the state has that provides us detailed information based on the size of the tsunami, what the coastal threat might be and areas that need to be evacuated.”
Konopa added the EOC remained in operation until 3 a.m. Wednesday morning and then went into what is referred as “Level Four” or a virtual activation.
“Luckily we did not get the impacts that were forecast to happen,” said Konopa. “We were looking at potential wave heights in Port San Luis, up to 3.2 feet. We only hit about two feet. It did correlate with high tide, but luckily there wasn’t a lot of damage that happened.”
On Wednesday, Port San Luis was business as usual with beachgoers, boaters, fisherman and other visitors all going about their day under normal circumstances.
“Fortunately, we had minimal impacts,” said Matt Ashton, Port San Luis Harbor District Acting Director and Chief Harbor Patrol Officer. “We did see, a 2.7 foot surge come in around 2:14 a.m. and that was the brunt of it. We didn’t see any significant energy coming pushing damaging any of our infrastructure that we found yet. We still are assessing the damage, but so far haven’t found any and aren’t expecting to find a whole lot. We’ve been in coordination with the EOC for the county, the sheriff’s department, the Army Corps of Engineers for damage assessments, and so far, we’ve been able to report that we haven’t found much, so I think we got on this one pretty clean.”
The story was the same in nearby Pismo Beach, which looked like another summer day in July featuring pleasant weather conditions once the morning overcast lifted late in the morning.
“We did see some additional waves come through,” said Pismo Beach City Manager Jorge Garcia. “We saw the tide rising a little faster than normal conditions would be, but nothing that couldn’t be managed or mitigated, so we’re back to normal operations today.”
Despite have little to no impacts from the waves, Garcia pointed out a Red Flag Warning was in effect on its beaches as a result of the Tsunami Warning.
“We have released a red flag warning here for our ocean conditions,” said Garcia. “That’s just because of the potential of additional surges or currents, so if you’re not anticipating them, it’s something to just be aware of. Our lifeguards are ready. We are staffed here on the beach and ready for the public to enjoy the community. We’ll continue to monitor the situation. We may need to have a red flag going into tomorrow into Thursday, July 31st, but we anticipate hopefully by tomorrow and this weekend to return back to normal operations.”