Mendocino County conducted a tsunami preparedness drill Wednesday to raise awareness about earthquake and tsunami hazards and to encourage residents in inundation zones to practice using evacuation routes.
Jeff Adair, emergency services coordinator for Mendocino County, called the drill a success in terms of public engagement and database maintenance. However, the decision not to activate tsunami sirens drew criticism from one of the county’s most vocal emergency preparedness advocates.
Adair said the drill was a collaborative effort involving Mendocino, Del Norte and Humboldt counties, along with the Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group.
“The goal of today’s drill was to get people thinking about earthquakes and tsunamis — to get them to look up whether they work, live, or send their children to school in a tsunami hazard zone,” Adair said. “Much of our social media outreach directed people to maps to help them determine if they’re in a hazard zone. It’s more of an awareness effort than anything else. But to take it one step further this year, we encouraged people to get up and evacuate on foot if they were in one of those zones.”
Adair noted the county received about eight emails from the public following the exercise. Many were requests to be removed from the contact list by individuals who no longer live in Mendocino County — a change Adair welcomed for maintaining accurate databases. He added that he spoke with at least one person who walked an evacuation route.
According to Adair, his counterparts in Del Norte and Humboldt counties did observe some evacuations.
Mendocino County’s coastal hazard zones include: Usal Beach, DeHaven and Wages Creek, Ten Mile River, MacKerricher State Park, Pudding Creek, Noyo River, Caspar Beach, Russian Gulch State Park, Big River, Little River, Albion River, Navarro River, Arena Cove and Anchor Bay.
For more information: hubsandroutes.net/tsunami
Steve James Henderson, known locally as Gizmo, voiced strong concerns about the decision not to activate tsunami sirens. He argued that sirens are a critical first line of defense, especially for people who might not receive text alerts — such as the elderly or those without charged phones. Gizmo also emphasized that sirens help alert non-English speakers and tourists who may not be familiar with local emergency protocols. He said sirens also enable residents to direct visitors to safety more quickly, including advising them on which radio stations to tune into and where to find high ground.
Adair said the organizers collectively decided not to activate sirens because they had been tested recently. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Humboldt County on Dec. 5, 2024, triggered a tsunami warning and siren activation.
Frank Hartzell, publisher of MendocinoCoast.News, said the December tsunami warning revealed that at least one siren — in the Pudding Creek inundation zone — was broken. The resident questioned how the county could confirm the siren is now functioning properly if it wasn’t tested during the latest drill.
“There is something called alert fatigue,” Adair said. “If you set them off too often, people will start to ignore them. So, our counterparts with the National Weather Service, the Tsunami Work Group and our neighboring counties to the north decided it was best not to activate the sirens again for this drill.”
Gizmo proposed implementing a grading system, similar to school report cards, to evaluate the effectiveness of emergency drills and identify areas needing improvement.
“I think a good test keeps in mind that we want to be able to evacuate a large number of people quickly — whether it’s a fire, earthquake or tsunami — and do it in a way that allows emergency services to get into place and do what they need to do,” Gizmo said.
He outlined key components of a successful evacuation: lookouts, clear communication, detailed evacuation procedures and knowledge of safety zones. He also stressed the need for redundant communication systems — such as sirens, internet-based emergency alerts, and both low-power and high-power radio.
