Tofino considers tsunami evacuation towers
Posted July 6, 2018 6:44 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TOFINO (NEWS 1130) – The District of Tofino is studying the feasibility of using towers in the event of a tsunami.
Similar structures have been built in vulnerable communities on the coast of Washington and Oregon.
“In some areas, there are no naturally occurring highgrounds, so they are structures that are built. They can just be towers,” explains Keith Orchiston, district emergency program coordinator.
He tells us tsunami towers or elevated platforms could handle anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred people.
“They can be multi-purpose. I’ve seen some multi-purpose buildings that are a school, and on the roof is the vertical evacuation area,” says Orchiston.
“They’re built to load-bearing standards for hydrostatic, hydrodynamic forces. And those are all the forces of water.”
Evacuating vertically rather than horizontally would allow more people reach “high ground” faster.
A tsunami warning was briefly issued in Tofino in the early morning hours of January 23, 2018, following a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in the waters southeast of Kodiak, Alaska.
In the end, there was only a three-centimetre wave and a 15-centimetre rise in sea level, hours after the quake.
– With files from Hana Mae Nassar
