'Prepared but not scared:' Guam, CNMI dodge tsunami threat
- Admin
- Jul 30
- 5 min read
By Mar-Vic Cagurangan and Jayvee Vallejera
Guam and Northern Marianas residents heaved a sigh of relief when the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted the tsunami advisory for the islands at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, capping off a daylong monitoring of updates from the National Weather Service.
Guam, Saipan, Rota and Tinian were spared from the calamity, despite the predicted arrival of tsunami waves from a distant earthquake in Russia.
“Only small waves were observed in many observations across the region. We were again very fortunate,” Landon Aydlett, warning coordination meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service, posted on his Facebook page after the tsunami warning agency cancelled the advisory.
Guam and CNMI residents are veterans of calamities. They are survivors of typhoons and have become accustomed to disaster warnings, including missile threat alerts. Vigilance and preparedness are part of the routine that residents of both territories have learned to practice with a sense of calm.
Wednesday's tsunami advisory might as well be another one of those on-the-spot disaster drills.
“No, not really,” Bobbie Guerrero, of Barrigada Heights, replied when asked if she was worried, explaining that Guam knows what to do in the face of any looming disaster.
"Like typhoon time. I'm waiting for BBQ and Spam to come out," Sam Mabini, former senator, said in jest. She joined other residents who evacuated to Agana Heights.
Tess Schwab of Agana Heights was not anxious either. “But I do watch out for the storm and typhoon warnings,” she said.
Guam residents took precautions just the same, steering clear of the beach and moving to higher ground.
Traffic on Marine Corps Drive on Guam was backed up as residents headed for safety to Agana Heights, which has an elevation of approximately 45 meters.
On Saipan, Laurence Borja said there were spots of panic buying, with many residents lining up at grocery stores and gas stations to stock up on food and fuel before fleeing with their families to higher ground.
Although there was no official order to close Beach Road, which mostly hugs the western coast of Saipan, police directed traffic away from the highway,
Borja said, and residents in the area were urged to evacuate their homes until the “all-clear” was declared.
The National Weather Service initially forecast one to three feet of tsunami waves hitting Guam and the CNMI between 2:36 p.m. and 2:50 p.m.
Government offices and some business establishments on Guam and the CNMI suspended their operations starting at noon after the weather service upgraded the alert level from tsunami watch to tsunami advisory at 10:56 a.m.
The U.S. Geological Survey recorded an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 8.0, which was later upgraded to a magnitude of 8.7, that occurred 133 km SE of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, with a depth of 74.0 km, at 9:24 a.m. (ChST).
The weather service warned that potential impacts could include sea level fluctuations, minor flooding of beach and harbor areas, and strong and unusual ocean currents in harbors, bays and other nearshore waters.
NWS said that waves up to a foot were observed in Guam’s tide gauges in early afternoon, but gradually diminished.
The ports of Guam, Saipan, Rota and Tinian suspended their operations. Authorities advised residents to stay out of the water and evacuate to higher ground.
At 5 p.m., Aydlett said NWS was "seeing data indicating a tsunami wave passing through Guam now at the Upper Harbor tide gauge as well as the Pago Bay tide gauge.
“We're looking at amplitude so far between 0.1 and maybe 0.3 meters. So not a bad wave. This is approaching about a foot. So it's right within expectations from the Tsunami Warning Center," he added.
Aydlett said the waves were not expected to bring a massive tsunami that could cause widespread destruction on Guam, other than minor impacts on those around the water.
"So we're talking about strong currents at Apra Harbor, strong currents near the coastal areas, the beaches," he said.
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Saipan resident Chie Ponce Borja said most residents do not ignore these warnings, having learned from their experience when the highly destructive Typhoon Soudelor hit the CNMI in 2015.
“Ever since Soudelor, residents don't take warnings like these for granted. As soon as the advisory was issued, people went to the store to stock up on basic needs and went to the gas stations to fill up. And most people have their important documents secured always for emergencies like these,” she said.
Saipan resident Donna Rivera said they first learned about the tsunami advisory through social media, and verified the news through local and national news sources.
They then spread the word and opened their church in Dan Dan, which is on higher ground, to accommodate churchmates who may need a place to stay for the moment.
Classes have not started yet, so there were no evacuations from schools located near the eastern shores of Saipan, like Hopwood Junior High School, said Rivera.
“Many were monitoring the situation, but they were not really scared,” she said, adding that being scared would only make it harder for anyone to move and think about what to do next.
The Northern Marianas College, which sits atop As Terlaje Hill and was one of the evacuation sites on Saipan, saw almost a hundred residents evacuating to the campus, where they joined NMC employees.
NMC president Galvin Deleon Guerrero said NMC’s emergency response team was able to accommodate everyone inside the campus despite the ongoing construction at the college.
NMC is building its student center, and the campus is an active construction site, so there are alternate parking spots.
“We anticipated that the roads would be congested, people would be rushing to the stores, to the gas stations, up the hills. We wanted to give our employees and students the chance to escape that,” said Deleon Guerrero.
It also helped that many of those who evacuated were calm. “I didn’t sense that people were afraid. Everyone was calm and because we were very methodical in how we responded to the situation, at least at the college, everyone felt prepared,” he said.
At 7:30 p.m., the U.S. Coast Guard Captain of the Port set Guam and the Rota ports back to Heavy Weather Condition Whiskey, reopening the ports to normal operations as the tsunami advisory ended.
Coast Guard officials, however, said further validation of the ports of Saipan and Tinian was still needed to safely resume normal operations and was expected overnight and at first light on Thursday.
Mariners were urged to transit all port areas with caution when entering or departing the waterway, aids-to-navigation may have shifted or otherwise become inoperable due to the presence of heavy weather.
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