With Washington’s 3000 miles of coastline, disseminating accurate and timely tsunami bulletins is an essential step to the tsunami alerting process. Over the past couple of years, I have been working with National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program state and territory emergency management partners to document their tsunami alerting and response procedures utilizing templates developed from Washington’s own Tsunami Alerting and Response Timeline. These documents created a solid tsunami alerting and communication foundation for each state and territory. With the newly created alerting foundation, experts from within each state and territory provided insights into their tsunami alerting and communication gaps and challenges. At the same time, both the National and Pacific Tsunami Warning Centers are undergoing updates to align and improve their ability to accurately evaluate potential tsunami threats and issue bulletins out to their customers. Together, these projects will significantly improve tsunami alerting within Washington State and across the country. The gaps and challenges from my work with the NTHMP partners in combination with the ongoing Tsunami Warning Center updates show hope for a greatly improved tsunami alerting process in the future.

What Will the Audience Learn:

Federal, state, and local partners all share a major role when it comes to tsunami alerting. The project I worked on will not only lead to improvements to the alerting procedures and processes within Washington and the Emergency Management Division but are also being taken into consideration by the National and Pacific Tsunami Warning Centers to improve how they interact with all coastal states and territories across the US. Additionally, EMD’s tsunami program will incorporate best practices and successful strategies of other state and territory-level tsunami programs to strengthen our resilience to tsunami hazards. Outside of the project I worked on, I want to also share the ongoing efforts for the National and Pacific Tsunami Warning Centers to improve their processes and products and what it means for the future of tsunami alerting for Washington.

Course Level: Intermediate

About the Presenter

Ethan Weller currently serves as a Tsunami Program Coordinator with Washington Emergency Management Division. He facilitates the development of Tsunami Maritime Response and Mitigation Strategies and supported other states and territories to document their tsunami alerting and response procedures as part of NOAA’s Hazard Simplification project. Ethan is passionate about building relationships, sharing knowledge, and incorporating inclusive approaches to ensure that Washington is able to effectively and efficiently prepare for and mitigate the impacts of tsunamis. He received his Bachelor of Science in Biology at Western Washington University and went on to obtain his Master of Public Administration with a concentration in Hazards, Disaster, and Emergency Management from the University of Colorado – Denver.