A city brochure issued this week urges residents to immediately leave their homes and seek high ground if a local temblor strikes. A warning system is in place in case a distant earthquake or tsunami occurs.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
“Never go to the beach to watch for, or to surf, a tsunami wave!”
That was one of several recommendations-“all of them as serious as a heart attack”-that Malibu Emergency Preparedness Director Brad Davis said need to be considered urgently by vulnerable coastal residents.
Picture a 40-foot-high wall of water crashing over the Malibu Colony, Highway 1 and the Malibu Courthouse before washing its debris up against the City Hall steps. Now picture that on your stretch of beach, Davis said.
“This could happen with less than 20 minutes’ notice,” Davis said. “That would barely be enough time for the Fire Department to get its trucks up onto a hill.”
The city this week published a brochure aimed at telling Malibu residents that geologists think a tsunami can strike the coast within minutes after a large offshore or local earthquake. Such an event could see a run-up in water height as high as 42 feet, which would slosh as far inland as elevations 90 feet above sea level.
The city brochure warns people to get as far away from the beach as they can if they see the tide start to go out after a local quake.
Davis is also finishing a 40-page addendum to the city’s Emergency Operations Plan dealing with tsunamis, a concern that intensified after the disasters occurred in the Indian Ocean 10 months ago. That plan will soon go before the City Council.
The plan would urge residents to immediately leave their homes and seek high ground if a local temblor strikes.
“You just won’t have any time to wait for an evacuation order,” Davis said.
Places like Bluffs Park, Point Dume or up a canyon road would be logical places to escape to following any possible tsunami from a nearby quake, Davis said. But he added that two logical places to go, Malibu High School or Pepperdine University, would be bad ideas.
“The high school is up high enough, but there is no road out, and if a tsunami hits you will be stuck there for days,” Davis said. “And Pepperdine will serve as the county’s emergency operations center; we don’t want to send people there.”
A distant earthquake and tsunami warning would give officials time to evacuate the city below the 90-foot elevation line. Low-flying helicopters and vehicles with sirens would be used to warn the populace, along with the city’s capability to call local numbers with an automated warning.
Law enforcement agencies have agreed to make Topanga Canyon Boulevard, and Kanan Dume and Encinal canyon roads one-way northbound if a mass evacuation is necessary, “but Malibu Canyon would be two-way for the county to move equipment in,” Davis said.
Malibu residents would be asked to go to evacuation centers at Bluffs Park or near Malibu Creek State Park if a distant tsunami were approaching.
As reported last spring, the U.S. Geological Survey gave a 35 percent possibility that a magnitude 6.5 earthquake will hit Malibu in the next 30 years, and said this big quake will have acceleration forces larger than the great quakes that can be expected along the San Andreas Fault.
Federal geologists are most worried about the Anacapa-Dume Fault, which lies parallel to and about 12 miles off the Malibu coastline. They concluded this fault is capable of generating a magnitude 7.5 earthquake.
Such a quake could cause an undersea landslide and resultant tsunami on several sharp cliffs just off the Malibu shore, or as far away as Catalina Island or the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Quakes on major faults across the bay could also slosh high water ashore along the Malibu coast, geologists said.
Although extremely rare, a tsunami hit the Santa Monica Bay in 1930 and killed a man in Santa Monica. The Indonesian earthquake last year caused a run-up of about 19 inches to hit the Southern California coast, scientists said, but no damage was reported.
As for taking advantage of a tsunami for that once-in-a-lifetime surfing ride, forget it.
“Because they are not like regular waves, they are impossible to surf,” asserts the city pamphlet. “They are much faster, higher and can come onshore packed with debris.”