Emergency briefing collapses after audience asks what the period on a 9.2 megathrust would be
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — Following the release of new computer modeling showing that a magnitude 9.2 Alaska earthquake could send 10-to-30-foot tsunami waves surging into the West Coast, Southern California surfers responded to the apocalyptic simulation this week with a single unified question: is it going to be crowded?
The modeling, produced by Washington State geologists and covered by Surfer, illustrates a wall of ocean energy racing down the coast from the Aleutian subduction zone, striking Washington, Oregon, and California within hours. Emergency planners called the visualization “startling” and “scary.” Local surfers called it “basically a forecast” and asked whether hours meant enough time to get off work.
The Briefing
Officials from the newly consolidated Office of Coastal Doom Preparedness held a public briefing at the Huntington Beach pier on Wednesday, intending to walk residents through evacuation routes. The briefing collapsed within eleven minutes when a man in the third row raised his hand and asked what the period would be.
“I explained that a tsunami is not a surfable swell,” said briefing officer Commander Alicia Thorne-Bagley, pinching the bridge of her nose in a manner witnesses described as load-bearing. “I explained that it is a moving shelf of ocean, debris, and municipal infrastructure. A gentleman in a Rip Curl hat then asked, and I am quoting from the transcript, whether that meant it would ‘hold shape.’ I have briefed combat units. I have never lost a room like this.”
According to the transcript, subsequent audience questions included whether the wave would be better at high or low tide, whether Lowers would handle the direction, whether 30 feet meant Hawaiian 30 feet or actual 30 feet, and whether anyone knew if the Alaska fault could produce a combo swell with the Baja hurricanes, “because that window could be special.”
Preparedness, Redefined
Emergency managers report that coastal preparedness enrollment has tripled since the model’s release, though intake forms reveal complications. Asked to list their evacuation plan, 61 percent of surf-community respondents wrote some version of “paddle out the back,” a strategy officials have formally classified as “incorrect at a scale we lack the vocabulary to describe.”
The Office has since produced targeted messaging, replacing the standard guidance of “move to high ground” with surf-specific translations such as “the wave is closed out, all of it, everywhere, forever” and “there is no channel, the channel is Nevada.” Early testing shows the revised language performing 40 percent better, though one focus group participant responded that he had surfed closeouts his whole life and “you just have to commit.”
Dr. Werner Castellanos-Fitch, a hazard psychologist retained by the state, says the response reflects a documented condition he calls Swell Reframing Syndrome, in which the surfing brain processes all incoming ocean information as potentially rideable. “We showed subjects the simulation of the 1964 Alaska event, the most powerful earthquake in North American history,” he said. “One hundred foot waves in the fjords. Devastation to Crescent City. A subject in the study leaned forward, watched the wave train propagate across the Pacific, and said, quietly, ‘Mavericks would be so weird that day.’ There is no treatment. There is only zoning.”
The Contrarians
A smaller faction of the community has taken the opposite position, arguing the tsunami will be terrible not because of the destruction but because of the crowd. “Every kook in the county is going to be on that thing,” said Pete Vandermolen, 58, of Seal Beach, who has complained about crowds at every break, party, and funeral he has attended since 1989. “Thirty foot wave, one takeoff zone, three million people. No thanks. I will wait for the aftershock swell. Dawn patrol it. Have it to myself.”
Vandermolen’s position, while scientifically deranged, has been praised by sociologists as “the purest expression of Southern California localism ever recorded, in that it extends territorial grumbling to a geologic catastrophe.”
Satirical outlets have covered the civic response closely, with Bohiney Magazine publishing a tsunami surf report rating the event “epic to victims” and Britain’s The London Prat noting that the UK has its own tsunami plan, “which is a kettle, and it has worked since 1953.”
Officials Regroup
Commander Thorne-Bagley says her office remains committed to reaching the surf community and has begun consulting lifeguards, who possess what she calls “decades of experience being ignored by the same people about the same water.” A new campaign will place warning information where surfers actually look, meaning it will be printed on the bottom of the surf forecast, disguised as a premium feature, and locked behind a login.
Seismologists stress that the recurrence interval for a great Aleutian rupture spans centuries and the odds of it striking in any given lifetime remain low, guidance the community has absorbed with characteristic precision. “Low odds,” nodded one surfer leaving the briefing, board under his arm. “So you’re saying it could be this winter.”
At press time, the Office of Coastal Doom Preparedness confirmed that in the event of an actual tsunami warning, sirens will sound continuously along the coast, and that the sirens have been specifically engineered to be audible over the sound of 4,000 men waxing boards at once.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com