NOAA says the safest thing you can do is move to higher ground

at once,

or go to the top of a tall, strong building. You should

not

wait to hear a tsunami warning. And, once a tsunami wave has reached land, you should not return to the coastline until local officials say it is safe. That is because tsunamis are often made of many waves, and later waves can be higher than the first one. There can be as much as an hour between waves. You might have to stay away from low-lying areas for as long as twenty hours after the first warning.

BOB DOUGHTY: Jenifer Rhoades of NOAA says the agency spends a lot of time and money educating people in areas where tsunamis may strike. She says it is important for people who live in those places to understand what she calls “nature’s warning signs.”

JENIFER RHOADES: “You can have a very near-shore earthquake that will result in a tsunami in minutes. And the time for us to issue a warning might exceed the time that that first wave arrives. So what we do those events is we tell people in those communities that if the earth shakes for more than twenty seconds and you cannot stand up through the earthquake that you need to hold through that earthquake but as soon as the earthquake is over you need to move to higher ground.”

(MUSIC)

A powerful earthquake and tsunami struck the Indian Ocean on December twenty-sixth, two thousand four. More than two hundred thousand people on two continents were killed.