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Tsunami Awareness Materials > PTWS Tsunami Warning! Video
When a major undersea earthquake occurs near the coast, a destructive tsunami can result that will hit near-by coasts in minutes and also travel across entire oceans causing damage 1000’s of kilometers away and up to 24 hours later. To alert far-away coasts, internationally coordinated tsunami early warning systems, such as the Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (PTWS), have been established to quickly provide tsunami threat information to countries.
2015 marks the 50th year of the PTWS. The System was established in 1965 in response to the 1960 M9.5 earthquake off South-central Chile that generated a tsunami which crossed the Pacific killing hundreds in Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines. The PTWS has been built up over the decades through international cooperation and the contributions of countries and organizations under the UNESCO IOC framework.
To sustain awareness on the dangers of tsunamis, and to educate the public on how the PTWS works to disseminate alerts on approaching tsunami, the ITIC, in cooperation with Chile, has produced a 6-minute outreach video.The aim of the video is to strengthen public and stake-holder agency knowledge of, and confidence in, tsunami alerts that save lives and reduce property damage.
This video chronicles the tsunami warning chain for a M9.5 earthquake off Northern Chile as Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) staff quickly analyze seismic and sea level data, forecast tsunami wave heights, and disseminate their threat assessments to country National Tsunami Warning Centers around the Pacific. Woven into this fast-paced video are vignettes highlighting tsunami warning and emergency response actions by centers and communities starting immediately after the earth-quake in Chile and Peru, and after receiving the PTWC alerts in Samoa and Hawaii, and in Australia, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Download PTWS TSUNAMI WARNING! information sheet (PDF, 245 KB)
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