Two warning centres, one in Hawaii and one in Alaska: how tsunami alerts began

Background

The United States Tsunami Warning System lists the LANTEX '26 exercise for the Atlantic coasts of the United States and Canada, set for 4 November, among its exercises. The system is run by the National Weather Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, under the United States Department of Commerce. Official tsunami warning in the United States began in 1949, after the tsunami generated in the Aleutian Islands in 1946 devastated Hilo. The centre was placed beside the Honolulu Geomagnetic Observatory in Hawaii, and part of that facility is still maintained by its staff. After the Chilean earthquake and tsunami of 1960, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission set up the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in 1968, and the United States offered its Hawaii centre as the operational headquarters of that system, renaming it the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. A second observatory was built at Palmer in Alaska after the great Alaskan earthquake of 1964, and the Alaska Regional Tsunami Warning System became operational in 1967. That centre, long called the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, was renamed the National Tsunami Warning Center in 2013.