Tsunami alert

Alaskan quake causes warning

A tsunami watch triggered by an undersea quake off Alaska was issued for Hawaii at 11:43 p.m. Monday, but it was canceled about 1¢ hours later.

The 7.9 temblor struck about 170 miles southeast of Kodiak in the Gulf of Alaska about 12 miles deep into the Earth, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on Oahu said Tuesday. The watch triggered alerts but no sirens.

It was canceled at 1:10 a.m. Tuesday.

After canceling the watch, the center said that tsunami waves of less than a foot were forecast to reach Hawaii. The initial watch notice said that the first waves were expected to arrive at 4:26 a.m. Tuesday.

The Maui County Emergency Operations Center at the county building in Wailuku was mobilized overnight Monday, county spokesman Rod Antone said. County officials joined a video conference with Hawaii Emergency Management Agency and county emergency management officials.

The earthquake was described as a “slip” earthquake that generally does not cause a large tsunami, Antone said.

Large earthquakes that cause land along fault lines to be raised or lowered displace water that generates the wave energy of a large tsunami, said an article in livescience.com. Quakes that push land mainly horizontally are less likely to produce the damaging large waves.

As they waited for an all clear from U.S. Geological Survey, county officials did a roundtable check of county resources, vehicles, generators and employees on call for emergency work in case they were needed, Antone said.

The call came in that the watch was canceled, “and Vern Miyagi (state Emergency Management administrator) wished us all a goodnight and we went home,” Antone said.

Referencing the recent false missile attack alert Jan. 13, Antone said: “Nuclear bombs may be a new thing for the state and counties, but we know tsunami and hurricanes. We’ve had enough practice.”

There have been those who have called this tsunami watch “another fake event,” and Antone emphasized that this was not the case. The earthquake was real and confirmed by national and international sources.

“We prepared for it, but thanks to the type of earthquake this was, we got lucky,” he said.