Tsunami

One year ago today, communities on the coast of Japan were reeling from a devastating earthquake and tsunami that killed almost twenty thousand people.

It could have been much worse: Japan’s elaborate warning system kicked in.

Here in the US, we have a similar system. It helped warn residents along the West Coast that waves from the Japanese tsunami were heading our way. But the program is facing steep budget cuts.

Tsunami damage in Santa Cruz

Rusty Kingon works down at the docks in Santa Cruz. He manages the boats for the UC Santa Cruz Rowing team. So when the smaller tsunami from the Japanese earthquake hit the coast of California, he was there. He caught the whole thing on video.

The surging current ripped docks right off their moorings. Twenty-five foot fishing boats flipped on their sides, like bath toys and smashed together.

Lost home

One of the lost boats belonged to Jody Connolly. Jody had lived there for two years.

When Connolly’s boat sank, he lost everything. He says he knows what happened in Santa Cruz doesn’t hold a candle to the damage in Japan. But it turned his life upside down.

Connolly says, "There's life before and life after the tsunami. When you lose everything, you know, that quick and that fast. It changes the course of your life."

It was the biggest tsunami to hit California since 1964. Damage amounted to about 50 million dollars. One man drowned in Crescent City, and the harbor there was destroyed.

CA Tsunami warning system

It could have been worse here in Santa Cruz, too, if not for a warning system that prompted people to vacate their boats and head inland.

David Oppenheimer, of the United States Geological Survey, says that system started ramping up soon as the fault ruptured off the coast of Japan.

"Within about 14 minutes, that quake is recorded everywhere around the planet."

Based on the shaking, computer models can predict how big a tsunami might be, and where it might hit. But those are just predictions.

"But you don’t know how high the wave is." says Oppenheimer.

DART buoys

For that, there’s another system in place: 39 buoys - they’re called DART buoys -- each the size of a small car, positioned in a ring around the Pacific Ocean. How they work is pretty straightforward.

There's a little device sitting on the bottom of the ocean. It’s called a pressure recorder. It works like a scale. It measures how much water is sitting on top of it. So when the wave rolls over it, says Oppenheimer, "The height of the ocean goes up, there’s more water, it feels more pressure. And so it sends a signal, up along its tether, to the buoy, which is loaded with batteries and solar panels, and a satellite transmitter, which sends the data back to shore."

Proposed cuts

But now, the Obama administration is proposing to weaken this system.

Under the 2013 budget, proposed by the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA will essentially stop fixing the buoys as quickly, when they break.

"I do have a concern, I’ve read the analysis," says Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat who represents San Jose, at a hearing last week in Washington, DC.

"If we’re not able to repair these buoys.. that could have a public safety impact."

NOAA head Jane Lubchenco said that until now, funding for the program came from a law, passed in 2005, But the law expired. Much of that money has simply run out.

Lubchenco says, "I agree it would be nice to have all those buoys up and running. We just don’t have the money."

Tsunami education and outreach

But what Lofgren, and other lawmakers didn't press Lubchenco on is a bigger, and arguably more important cut that NOAA is proposing: Three and a half million dollars that pays for tsunami education and outreach efforts along US coasts.

Rick Wilson is a geologist for the state of California. I asked him what he thought about those buoys. He responded, "Yeah, we are so tied to our high tech gadgets."

The buoys, he says, are great for tsunamis that start really far away, like in Japan. But if an earthquake is close -- like, off the coast of Oregon or Washington - by the time the buoys send out alerts, it’s too late.

"We’d have about 15 minutes to react to such an event."

Fifteen minutes before a major tsunami hits the shore, you do not want people checking their emails for the latest update. They should feel the quake, see the water receding, and know exactly what to do. That is what saves lives, he says.

Says Wilson, "The ability of one person who does know what to do on a very crowded beach is priceless. "

Tsunami knowledge crucial

And it was priceless in Japan, says David Oppenheimer, of the USGS.

"There were 200 thousand people living in the area. Ten percent of the people died. Terrible tragedy. Ninety percent survived. They knew what to do. It wasn't because of DART buoys. It was because the Japanese people know about tsunamis."

But knowing requires education, drills, signs. And NOAA is making deep cuts to that program.

Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for NOAA, said safety won’t be compromised by the cuts, that NOAA has other programs in place to cover some of this work. She says there’s room in the budget to do some trimming. "You don’t always have to continue putting signs up. Once they’re there, there’re there."

But signs, says David Oppenheimer, eventually get torn down. Memories fade.

Oppenheimer says, "I don’t think that because we’ve just done our first round that we can sit back and think, OK, we don’t have to worry about this anymore. People forget."

Meanwhile, several members of Congress are looking for ways to restore the funding.