It’s tsunami preparedness week, and in one British Columbia community, they’re taking it particularly seriously.
“Being prepared on the coast in Tofino is part of life, and the kids know, the families know, the visitors certainly are made aware,” said Tofino Mayor Dan Law.
Located on Vancouver Island’s west coast, the popular tourist destination sees its population of 2,500 nearly double during the busy summer months.
It’s also uniquely exposed to the threat of a tsunami compared to many other parts of B.C.’s coast, according to Katsu Goda, an associate professor of earth sciences at Western University.
“The land is very much surrounded by the ocean and there’s not much highlands, we are talking about 10 minutes, 20 mintues, something like that (to evacuate),” he said.
“And there’s lots of elderly people, kids, and it could happen at night. So given all those situations, especially in the coastal beach area it’s really flat … if a huge tsunami happened, then those areas scientifically we can show would be inundated completely.”
On Friday, Tofino held its ‘High Ground Hike,’ a community evacuation drill aimed at familiarizing locals with what to do in the event of a tsunami that’s run since 2016.
It’s also recruiting volunteers who will be trained up in the case of a tsunami or other evacuation threat, and has partnered with academics to better study how to respond.
Despite never having been hit by a tsunami in the modern era, Goda said the small community is punching above its weight in preparedness, with emergency sirens installed and detailed inundation mapping showing areas that would be at risk.
There’s one other major project the community wants to put in place: a way to evacuate up, not away.
“The vertical evacuation tower was originally a proposal from a resident, actually,” Law said.
“It’s certainly a realistic proposal and all it really needs in funding. They have them elsewhere in the world and they work excellently.”
Vertical evacuation towers are common in Japan, where they are typically steel frame structures with a platform at a height of 20 to 30 metres — high enough to overtop even the biggest tsunami surge, Goda explained.
Such a tower would be built to withstand a one-in-500-year event.
“So it’s a slim chance, but those kinds of disasters actually happen,” he said.
“So it’s not that because it’s small we can ignore it. We also have to take into account the consequences.”
The provincial government says it’s committed to working with Tofino on the tsunami threat, and has given the community $150,000 for early work on such a tower.
“We have been able to give them funding for the planning phase of that project, which is underway,” said Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Kelly Greene.
“Any subsequent design would be after the planning phase.”
Law said actually building the tower would cost somewhere between $4 million and $6 million, an expense that would require major assistance from senior levels of government.
In the meantime, Law says the community is constantly reviewing its safety and communication plans with an eye to the unlikely but never impossible prospect of a tsunami.
“There’s always a risk, but this community is doing a great job at preparedness,” he said.