Port Renfrew woke up to a siren March 11th, and those living along the tide line quickly evacuated to a nearby elementary school, spending the night on higher ground under threat of a tsunami advisory. Provincial emergency officials are now taking a look at how coastal communities reacted to the threat, and say they are impressed with Port Renfrew’s response. Officials are also commending Port Alberni for closing down schools because buses would have to drive through potential inundation areas. Emergency Management BC won’t go into specifics about what we could have done better in the first 24 hours after the earthquake in Japan, but they do acknowledge there is plenty we can learn from watching how the most prepared nation in the world has dealt with multiple blows in the form of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. Kelli Kryzanowski, the Manager of Catastrophic Disaster Planning, says the Japanese are taught how to react to an earthquake from kindergarten all the way up through the corporate world. She says Emergency Management BC is also looking at how social media has played a role in the disaster, and how its power can be harnessed most effectively. BC disaster experts are working right now with their counterparts up and down the west coast on an exercise simulating how our coast would be affected by a 9.0 quake striking off Eugene Oregon. Officials say it’s part of year-round planning for the earthquake that is not a matter of if, only when. Follow Andrew …

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