In the hours following reports of a magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile late Friday night Pacific Standard Time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began tracking the side effects, which included a possible tsunami.
About 11 a.m. Saturday, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Harbor Patrol Newport Beach received an advisory from the U.S. Coast Guard about a possible 2- to 3-foot wave surge hitting the coast just after noon.
At 11:45 a.m. the advisory was upgraded to an imminent threat warning of a 6- to 8-foot surge along the Southern California coast, said Harbor Master Lt. Mark Long.
Authorities were given a 15- to 45-minute window to react, Long said.
As his employees evacuated harbor patrol headquarters and tried to confirm the more grim report, the city initiated AlertOC as a precaution.
City officials initiated the reverse 9-1-1 system that has an automated message sent out to local land lines.
The public can go to www.AlertOC.com and add cell and work numbers to the system as well.
Eing said authorities chose to broadcast instructions to stay away from the beaches to every number in Newport Beach.
Instead, only a fraction of those lines were reached because the local phone switches couldn’t handle the influx of outgoing calls, she said.
About 75,000 numbers didn’t receive the first call. A second round of calls connected an additional 15,000. Still, about 60,000 people were not given instructions to avoid the coast.
Six- to 8-foot waves never hit Newport Beach, and authorities have still not figured out where the information originally came from. In a letter posted on the city’s website, city officials speculated that the information was actually meant for Hawaii.
