When the ocean comes inland: Tsunami preparedness policy for Pacific island and Hawaii coastal communities — What the warning systems miss

This commentary examines tsunami preparedness policy for Pacific Island and Hawaiʻi coastal communities, focusing on how technical warning systems translate into evacuation at community level. It cites the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center’s warnings following the 11 March 2011 Tohoku earthquake off Japan and identifies geographic, social and infrastructure conditions that affect how warnings reach people and inform evacuation. It notes that many Hawaiʻi residents speak languages other than English at home, including Ilocano, Chuukese and Marshallese, and that English-language alerts may not reach them effectively within the evacuation window for a local tsunami.

The commentary recommends funding multilingual tsunami warning dissemination for communities with significant non-English-speaking populations, commissioning evacuation route capacity analyses that account for post-seismic road degradation rather than normal traffic flow alone, and developing community-based tsunami preparedness programmes for Pacific Island diaspora communities in Hawaiʻi. These measures are intended to bridge the gap between technical warning system capability and community-level preparedness behaviour.