No time to run? Tsunami pod aims to save lives - for a price
UNITED STATES: When Jeanne Johnson lived in New Orleans, she figured out how to weather hurricanes. When the family moved to Kansas City, she taught her kids to take cover from tornadoes. So when Johnson recently bought a house on Washington state’s Long Beach Peninsula about 180 kilometres southwest of Seattle - she set out to improve her odds of surviving a megaquake and tsunami.
Running for high ground before the wave hits isn’t an option from her property. Nor are there any tall, sturdy buildings nearby. Instead, Johnson is betting her life on a new, high-tech solution: a tsunami survival capsule manufactured by a fledgling company near Seattle.
The neon-orange sphere is meant to protect its occupants from drowning or being crushed by debris as towering surges batter the coast. It’s made of aircraftgrade aluminium, with a watertight marine door. Tiny porthole windows are equipped with bulletproof glass. There’s a ceramic thermal lining, a GPS beacon and air canisters.
As the company’s first customer, Johnson has been experimenting with the quickest way to climb in, batten the hatch and buckle up for a ride she’s not eager to take.
‘‘It’s going to be terrible,’’ says the 55-year-old Microsoft employee. ‘‘But it’s better than the alternative.’’
The pod is the brainchild of aerospace engineer Julian Sharpe, founder of Survival Capsule LLC. He got the idea after the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami, which swept more than 200,000 people to their deaths.
Sharpe and his family were staying at a waterfront hotel in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and he wondered how they could get to safety if a similar disaster struck the US Pacific Northwest.
After the 2011 Japanese quake and tsunami, which killed 16,000 people in the world’s most disaster-ready nation, Sharpe and his colleagues started work in earnest on their escape pod.
In his day job, Sharpe runs a small company that specialises in structural analysis and stress testing of airplane components. He applied those methods to the design of capsules of various sizes strong enough to withstand a ferocious battering during a tsunami.
His team used computer modelling to simulate the forces the pods are likely to encounter from rushing water or being slammed into walls and buried by debris. They subjected a capsule to over 18,000 kilograms of pressure to ensure its door wouldn’t buckle and leak. In a stunt for a film crew, they wired a pod with sensors and sent it over a 60-metre waterfall with no serious damage.
The design has been awarded a US patent. ‘‘I would use this for my family,’’ Sharpe said.
In such a new market, though, no standards or regulations exist to ensure the safety of such devices. At least one Japanese company offers fibreglass tsunami pods that Sharpe believes could be easily damaged.
Chuck Wallace, emergency management director for Grays Harbor County on the Washington coast, is skeptical of the whole approach.
‘‘What if you get stuck under debris, or something tears it and it leaks?’’ asked Wallace, a US Navy veteran who served on submarines.
And if a pod gets washed out to sea, it’s unlikely the Coast Guard or anyone else will be on hand to rescue the occupant, he says. ‘‘You’re just not going to convince me they’re safe.’’
Johnson took out a loan to buy her 1.5m-diameter, two-person pod for US$13,500.
When a four-person version is available, she intends to trade up for an extra US$4000. ‘‘I want to have room, in case my kids come to visit,’’ she said.
She plans to anchor the pod on a long steel tether designed to hold it in place. She’s stocking the capsule with water, a 40-day supply of dehydrated food, warm clothing and an emergency radio.
Sharpe says he’s got a list of about 400 potential customers around the world, including a luxury hotel in the Maldives. But he’s focused mainly on building a market in Japan, where emergency preparedness is paramount.
- TNS