Cantwell backs tsunami prep bill

Published 3:17 pm Sunday, February 22, 2026

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A bill introduced in Congress this month by a Washington senator aims to bolster the federal government’s efforts to prepare for and respond to tsunamis.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) on Feb. 13 introduced the Tsunami Warning, Research, and Education Act of 2026 alongside Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, Republicans from Alaska. The bill would reauthorize the Tsunami Warning and Education Act for five years, building off the Tsunami Warning, Education, and Research Act of 2017 that Cantwell co-authored.

“The State of Washington faces one of the greatest tsunami threats in the world, putting coastal communities, critical infrastructure, and thousands of families at serious risk,” Cantwell said in a news release. “Preparation will save lives, so this bill develops a comprehensive national readiness strategy for a Cascadia event, strengthens our nation’s tsunami warning systems, and improves coordination between federal, state, local, and tribal partners.”

$35 million annually

If passed and signed into law, the bill would reauthorize the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) tsunami programs at $35 million annually from 2027 through 2031, which would represent an increase of about $9.2 million (35.8%) over the 2026 fiscal year funding.

More specifically to the interests of the Pacific Northwest, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would be directed to evaluate the nation’s emergency preparedness for a Cascadia Subduction Zone event. The bill would task NOAA to implement a strategy to improve tsunami preparedness based on that GAO review.

The first waves of a tsunami triggered by an earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone could reach the shores of the Long Beach Peninsula in as little as 15 minutes. These “local-source” tsunamis are the most severe and widespread threat facing the peninsula, and people who live in a tsunami inundation zone and feel the ground shake for at least 45 seconds should seek higher ground or move inland immediately.

Federal and state authorities have put more attention toward monitoring and preparing for tsunamis in light of the 2011 Japan tsunami and 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Cantwell helped usher passage of the Tsunami Preparedness Act in 2006 that, among other things, expanded and upgraded the national tsunami detection and warning system.

However, substantial progress remains elusive in both Olympia and Washington, D.C. when it comes to erecting vertical evacuation towers and adopting other lifesaving measures for communities — such as those on the peninsula — where timely escape from a Cascadia Subduction Zone tsunami is unfeasible. Only a smattering of such structures have been built along the Washington coast, including a tower constructed by the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe in Tokeland.

Other provisions

The bill would also require NOAA to evaluate and improve tsunami alert communications, maintain fail-safe tsunami warning capabilities and conduct annual tsunami warning drills with federal, state, local and tribal partners, as well as expand coordination efforts on tsunami warning, preparedness and response to include tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.

In response to the shuttering of nine seismic monitoring stations in Alaska last fall after the federal government declined to renew a $300,000 NOAA grant with the Alaska Earthquake Center, the bill would protect NOAA’s access to that seismic data from the earthquake center.

At the time the seismic stations went offline, Pacific County Emergency Management Agency Director Scott McDougall said PCEMA was “losing an important tool” as part of its response to distant-source tsunamis. “They’re still gonna have their basic capability, it’s just going to slow down notifications regarding a distant-source tsunami in the state of Alaska.”

Both the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center — which covers Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — and the National Tsunami Warning Center that covers all other coastal areas of the country would be required to hire a tsunami warning coordinator to coordinate with state, local and tribal emergency managers.

Tsunami evacuation maps for all of coastal Pacific County can be found at pcema.info/plans.