Wave Warning: A new tsunami alert system on Canada's East Coast
Canadian Geographic, September/October 2007

Less than five percent of recorded tsunamis in the world have occurred in the Atlantic, but Canada's deadliest tsunami killed 29 people and destroyed many homes in Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island in 1929. Seventy-eight years later, Atlantic Canada has put a system in place to warn residents of an approaching tsunami.

Launched in January by the federal government, the Atlantic Tsunami Warning System will provide advance notice in the events of an underwater earthquake that could produce a tsunami. It will allow time for people on the coast to reach higher ground and for boaters to move into safer waters.

Warnings will first be issued by the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, based on seismic data and water level readings from sea level gauges. When notified, the Atlantic Storm Prediction Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, will inform various government agencies, which will spread the message through the media and marine and weather radio systems. The process should take 15 to 30 minutes.

"If you look at the 1929 event, the waves took an hour and a half to travel from the Grand Banks to the coast of Newfoundland," says Fred Stephenson, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans tsunami expert based in Sidney, B.C. "Getting out a warning in a timely fashion is critical in preventing loss of life."