In the Pacific territory of Guam shortly before lunchtime on Tuesday, Sam Mabini’s phone began to ping. A tsunami warning had been issued after an 8.8-magnitude quake struck a remote part of the Russian coast. Authorities had put out the alert over concerns that destructive waves could slam the shoreline in the coming hours, and urged people to move away from the coast. Mabini, a former Guam senator, took action.
“I went to higher ground just in case,” she said. Her family lives in the lower area of Tamuning and they moved to a more elevated part of the village. She joined other residents who evacuated to Agana Heights, a higher part of Hagåtña, the capital of the US island in the western Pacific Ocean.
In villages, towns and cities across the world’s largest ocean, from Russian and Chinese ports to Japanese fishing communities and coastal cities across the US west coast and farther south in Latin America, warnings and evacuation orders rang out after the quake, one of the strongest ever recorded. Workers were sent home and businesses locked down as they braced for what might hit in the hours ahead.
Over the course of Wednesday, governments in many countries including the US and Japan downgraded their initial tsunami alerts, but not until after countless people across multiple time zones had fled as a precaution, many in the middle of the night.
In parts of Russia, waves of up to 4 metres were recorded and authorities urged people to move away from the shoreline.
In Japan, footage by the public broadcaster NHK showed many people on the roof of a building on the northern island of Hokkaido, sheltering under tents from the beating sun, while fishing boats left harbours to avoid potential damage from the incoming waves.
About 200 people evacuated to a Buddhist temple that sits on high ground overlooking Kamaishi, in Iwate prefecture, a city that lost about 1,250 residents in the devastating March 2011 tsunami. The Senjuin temple is a designated municipal tsunami evacuation area.
The chief priest, Keio Shibasaki, told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper: “Considering that more than 1,000 people took refuge here after the [2011] earthquake, the number of evacuees is relatively small, but we have started preparing lunch with stored food in case of unforeseen circumstances such as power outages. We are prepared for a long stay.”
Evacuees included staff from the city hall, the post office, and children and teachers from the nearby Kamaishi kindergarten.
“We evacuated when the tsunami warning was issued,” the kindergarten head, Keito Fujiwara, told the Mainichi Shimbun. “We stored emergency food supplies at the temple and have been preparing accordingly. During the 2011 earthquake, there were cases where parents went to pick up their children and became victims, so we communicated via group LINE [a popular Japanese messaging app] that under no circumstances should anyone go to pick up their children.”
In 2011, the tsunami waves swept over the Kamaishi tsunami protection breakwater, a decades-long $1.5bn project that had been completed two years previously, inundating the city in scenes that were captured on video and seen around the world.
The only death related to Wednesday’s tsunami appeared to be in Japan, where a 58-year-old woman was reported to have died after her car fell from a cliff as she evacuated to higher ground, according to local media.
In Hawaii, tsunami warning sirens blared twice on Tuesday afternoon on multiple islands including Oahu, where the capital, Honolulu, is located, and Kauai. Evacuations were ordered for some coastal areas as the Honolulu department of emergency management warned: “Take action! Destructive tsunami waves expected.”
As residents raced to get out, traffic backed up in some Honolulu neighbourhoods. Even though it is summer break for pupils, some schools issued alerts cancelling sports and other activities.
On Kauai shortly after the tsunami warning was issued, staff at the National Tropical Botanical Garden suspended tours on its south shore and moved all visitors and employees out of the inundation zone to higher ground.
Still, blue skies and breezy conditions prevailed as many in Hawaii left work early heading for home or for designated safe areas away from the islands’ heavily populated coastline. Residents have become particularly sensitive to phone warnings and civil defence sirens after Hawaii’s emergency management agency issued a false alert warning of an inbound “ballistic missile threat” in 2018, causing widespread panic.
All islands activated emergency operating centres, shelters began opening, and people in coastal areas were advised to head to higher ground immediately. Kauai police asked the public to stay off the road unless absolutely necessary. When the waves arrived, they were not as destructive as feared, and Hawaii’s emergency management agency said evacuation orders had been lifted and there were no reports of major damage.
In Guam, residents were urged to remain out of the water and told to move away from beaches and harbours, at least 100ft (30 metres) inland and 50ft above sea level. The port authority and other government agencies suspended operations, while marina users and local residents were told to evacuate to higher ground. Workers in some businesses and in the Guam visitors bureau in the coastal district of Tumon were sent home.
But some were not worried by the warnings. Tessa Borja, a policy analyst from Tumon, did not feel evacuating was necessary and stayed in her second-floor flat. “We are protected by the reef,” she said.
In nearby Saipan, the largest island and capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, similar warnings were issued. Government offices were closed and businesses in low-lying areas shut their doors. Petrol stations had long queues of vehicles wanting to fill up.
Some residents living near the shoreline in Saipan, an island of about 43,000 people, fled to higher ground as they waited for the all clear from authorities. Tsunami drills by emergency authorities have been held regularly in on the island.
As the ripples of the earthquake spread across the Pacific, Latin America was one of the last places to be hit. Peruvians received beeping alerts and text messages on their phones from the National Civil Defence Institute, warning them to stay away from the beach and telling authorities to close coastal access points along the country’s 1,864-mile (3,000km) Pacific-facing coastline.
In the capital Lima, the coastal road was closed, though La Punta, a low-lying peninsula in the nearby port district Callao, was not evacuated. R Adm Jorge Vizcarra, a spokesperson for the Peruvian navy, said: “The train of waves will be noticeable, but it will not be high enough to have a significant impact on the population.”
