Pitufa.at

Ever since we set out sailing we’ve relied on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for weather info and warnings. But NOAA data and warnings on storms, earthquakes, climate, etc. are not just important for sailors, but for everyone around the world. That’s why the orange administration thought it was a great idea to cut their staff and budget brutally down.
Yesterday there was a massive earthquake off Kamchatka and islands and countries around the Pacific were threatened by a possible tsunami. We’re on the NOAA email list and received an initial warning just an hour after the earthquake, followed by hourly updates. They predicted 1-3 m waves for CHILE… COSTA RICA… FRENCH POLYNESIA… GUAM… HAWAII… JAPAN… JARVIS ISLAND… JOHNSTON ATOLL… KIRIBATI… MIDWAY ISLAND… PALMYRA ISLAND… PERU… SAMOA… AND SOLOMON ISLANDS.
We’ve received such warnings before and they usually were downgraded before the wave arrived, so we remained in our anchorage, but were ready to leave for the safety of deep water in case of reports of massive tsunamis from islands closer to the epicentre than the Solomons. We kept googling, found some news pieces from Japan (50 cm) and eventually Hawaii (up to 2 m), but no official reports from NOAA that we (and many other worried people) were waiting for. There must be hundreds of weather stations and buoys out there–how is it possible, that in our super-modern, connected world such data isn’t readily available in case of emergency?
We think the reason might be budget cuts…
In the end it was a non-event in the Solomon Islands, we didn’t notice anything odd and when the NOAA numbers finally came in (long after the wave had passed), Honiara (the capital of the Solomons) was mentioned with a 10 cm wave. We’re relieved, but still worried about the lack of information flow.