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Guide

Tsunami: what to do

Checked September 13, 2026 against Washington Emergency Management, the Washington Geological Survey, county emergency management and the National Tsunami Warning Center.

The Tsunami tile repeats what the National Tsunami Warning Center has said. This page is about the tsunami it will not warn you about — the one that starts here, where the shaking is the warning and the first waves arrive before any alert could reach you.

If the ground shakes hard, or shakes for a long time, do not wait for anything. Washington Emergency Management’s own instruction is to go: “This is your warning! Take action immediately by moving inland to high ground.” Do not wait for a siren, a phone alert, or this website.

Two completely different events

The word tsunami covers two things that need opposite responses, and the Washington Geological Survey separates them plainly.

A distant tsunami comes from a faraway source — the survey names the Alaska–Aleutian Subduction Zone as this coast’s greatest distant hazard. There is time: “usually at least three hours.” Warnings are issued, sirens sound, the tile turns. The system works as designed.

A local tsunami comes from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, immediately offshore. The survey: local tsunamis “pose the greatest threat because tsunamis are most damaging near their source and there is little time to issue official warnings and evacuate.” For this coast, Emergency Management puts the first waves at 10 to 20 minutes after a major earthquake. A 2021 assessment of the outer coast used a tighter figure: “people on the outer coast may only have 10 to 15 minutes once the ground stops shaking.” Both numbers are the state’s own, from different pages; neither leaves room to check a screen.

So the honest summary is that this tile is useful for one of those two events and irrelevant to the other. Nothing published anywhere can reach you fast enough for Cascadia. The shaking is the alert.

The natural warning signs

Emergency Management: “If you are at the coast and you feel a strong or long earthquake, see a sudden rise or fall of the ocean, or hear a loud roar from the ocean—a tsunami may follow very soon.”

Go on foot. The state’s own evacuation sheets say so: “Evacuate on foot if at all possible because of potential road damage and traffic jams.” If you are in a boat at the dock, Emergency Management says leave it: “Leave your boat and go inland to high ground on foot as soon as possible.” And come back only when officials say so — later waves are often bigger than the first.

The sirens, and what they are not

Washington runs a network of 121 All Hazard Alert Broadcast (AHAB) sirens on the inner and outer coasts. Pacific County has twenty-three of them. Grays Harbor County Emergency Management and the state can both activate them, around the clock.

What they are not: a siren carries about one mile, and both counties state plainly that the sirens “are not intended to be heard indoors.” If you are inside, or more than a mile from one, or asleep, the siren is not your warning. The shaking still is.

The maps are the part worth doing before you need them

The Washington Geological Survey publishes two kinds of map for this coast, and they answer different questions.

Evacuation maps show the inundation extent, the routes out and points of interest — where to go.

Walk time maps show “the time it would take to evacuate on foot from the tsunami inundation zone” alongside “how long it would take for the first tsunami wave to arrive” — whether you can make it. They assume a slow walking pace of 2.46 miles per hour, the same pace used for timing pedestrian crossings. The survey does not soften the result: “in some places a slow walk may not be fast enough to evacuate before waves arrive.”

Outer-coast communities have been mapped in stages: Ilwaco and Cape Disappointment, Long Beach and Seaview, and Westport in 2019; Ocean City to Copalis Beach, Copalis Beach to Pacific Beach, Moclips, Taholah, Queets, Hoh and La Push in 2023; Neah Bay, the Tsoo-Yess River, the Lower Elwha Klallam lands and Kalaloch in 2024; Raymond and South Bend in 2025. Look yours up once, at home, and know the answer before the ground moves.

The north coast, where the wave is closest

The Geological Survey’s evacuation brochures for this end of the peninsula put numbers on it, and they are not the same number twice. For La Push: “A wave as high as 20 feet could reach the Quileute Reservation within 30 minutes of the quake.” For Queets, on the Quinault Reservation: “A wave as high as 20 feet could reach the Quinault Indian Reservation, and the Village of Queets within 20 minutes.” For Taholah and Point Grenville: 18 feet, “within 20 minutes”. On the Strait the water arrives later and lower — Neah Bay “as high as 9 feet ... in under a half hour to an hour”, Clallam Bay “as high as 9 feet ... in just under an hour” — which is time to move, not time to wait.

The east end of the Strait has longer still, and that is the one number on this page worth remembering. The Survey’s brochure for Port Angeles: “A wave as high as 9 feet could reach the Port Angeles area within about an hour of the quake.” For Sequim: “This tsunami would reach Sequim in about 1-3/4 hours.” An hour is not safety — it is an hour to walk inland and uphill while the roads are still passable, and the shaking will have taken the bridges and the power with it. The board’s own line, that the first waves can arrive within half an hour, is written for the ocean beaches; on the Strait it is the outside edge of the same instruction, which has not changed since the first page of this guide: when the ground shakes hard enough that standing is difficult, go, and do not wait to be told.

Walk-time maps exist for Taholah, Queets, Hoh, La Push and Neah Bay. Kalaloch has neither brochure nor walk-time map: it is Park land with no resident community, and a visitor there has the natural warning and the hill behind the beach, and nothing else.

Fifty sirens were added to the state network in 2021, several of them on this coast: the Makah tribal housing area, the Hobuck campground and Sekiu among them. The rule is the same as everywhere: a siren is a bonus, and the shaking is the warning.

If you cannot get out in time: vertical evacuation

Some places on this coast have no high ground within reach on foot. The answer there is a structure built to be climbed. As of this page’s last check there are two finished ones on the outer coast:

A third, in Westport’s Marina district, has a $15.2 million federal grant and room for at least 2,000 people; it is designed and scheduled rather than built. A 2021 state assessment of what this coast actually needs put the figure at 25 to 40 structures in Pacific County and 30 to 42 in Grays Harbor County. Two is what exists.

What the alert levels mean

Sources