Hear It Now!

In Point Roberts, earlier this month, I was driving west on APA Road and eventually came to Tyee.  And what to my wondering eyes should appear?  Something round and modular and white upon a tall pole.  I couldn’t remember having seen this previously; on the other hand I often don’t notice things.  But it has turned out to be a pole of recent placement.  It is a tsunami warning siren. 

It goes with the signs that don’t exactly lead anywhere.  Well, I suppose they lead to higher ground, but they don’t tell you when you’ve gotten there.  The signs around the peninsula indicate that you should go this way or that way, but when you come to the end of a route, it doesn’t tell you’ve gotten to the place you should be.  If it were me, I’d just keep driving, waiting for the next sign to tell me where to go for the next sign, which would eventually lead to a sign that says, ‘Okay, you can stop now and just stay right here until somebody tells you to move on somewhere else.’.

I’ve seen only one of these siren towers on the Point  (which I’m afraid is going to be more than adequate).  I’ve poked around on the net and have found that there are many kinds of sirens available for this kind of task.  The one we have is a ‘federal signal modulator,’ or at least it looks like the pictures of such sirens.  If you would like to find out what it probably sounds like, here is a youtube of such a siren. Remember not to be wearing earphones when you play it. 

Many places, according to Wikipedia, test their sirens every so often.  In Cannon Beach, Oregon, they have a tsunami siren that they test, but they don’t play the sound of the siren when it is a test; they play, instead, the sound of a mooing cow.  Youtube of that, too, here.  There at Cannon Beach, I guess they are still waiting to here what it really sounds like.  May they hear, forever, only the sound of a mooing cow.

Stick Figures in Peril

Point Roberts isn’t just an out of the way place with nothing in common with the rest of the world. We share, for example, an interest in tsunamis and their consequences with many others in this world. I don’t know that there’s been a tsunami in recorded history that significantly affected Point Roberts, but there was a tsunami on the West Coast back in 1964 that was generated by an Alaskan earthquake on Easter Sunday, an 8.4 on the Richter Scale. People died in Oregon and in California from that upswelling, so the tsunami concern is a realistic one for emergency planners on this coast.

On a more humorous note, however, I offer an impressive collection of stick figures in peril in the face of a tsunami. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences in these signs. Some, in Thai and/or Indonesian, speak to those country’s very recent experience with tsunamis, if not with stick figures. Others seem to suggest that the response to a tsunami is to move quickly to the right (indicated by the right-pointing arrow); yet others would have you climb the nearest cliff, preferably the one directly in front of you (with the wave directly behind you). Good advice all round, I’m sure. This advice compares favorably with that offered by our own stick figure in peril, seen several places around the Point, including South Beach Road off of APA Road, and Gulf Road in front of The Blue Heron, the source of my photo.

This site is but a tiny segment of the much larger ‘Stick Figures in Peril’ site. The iconography of many of these signs is fascinating, not least because I can’t even begin to imagine what the sign is supposed to be conveying. Don’t push people in wheelchairs into bodies of water wherein crocodiles reside? I would think not; surely that is not its meaning? Nevertheless, I have difficulties with all these signs, although they seem to be much beloved by the signage agencies of all governments. I understand that you can’t assume everybody who needs warnings will speak English (Oh, why not, she thought crankily?), but why would you assume that everyone understands pictographs? Better yet, where is the dictionary of pictographs for us to consult? Is this an international convention? Is the U.N. involved? Why does the tsunami wave look like a big saw blade? Why are the tsunami signs for Point Roberts so much like the ones for Indonesia, except for language, which is supposed to be unneeded because of the pictograph? Ought these pictographs not be culture specific? Or is this to be the final evidence of ‘it’s a small world after all’ (at least if you leave out words).

Because we have a lot of deer around, both here and on the Sunshine Coast, we frequently get signs that feature pictographs of prancing/jumping deer along the roads. (Stick animals in peril?) Are we to assume that these are warnings, specifically, ‘Don’t run into a jumping deer’? Or just information: ‘Hey, watch the jumping deer on this road!’ In any case, although I’ve seen deer in both places, including near the road, I’ve never seen one prancing or jumping. Just another misleading sign, I’m obliged to conclude. Or maybe uncooperative deer.

Playing Catch-Up

Border Survey. Got an email message from the psychology professor conducting the border survey which (1) explains the question that particularly puzzled me (as to how knowledgeable the survey taker was about effective border policies); and (2) advises about the surveys’ soon-approaching deadline. Second things first: take the survey NOW because it will become ‘inactive’ on Monday (21st). I don’t know whether that’s the end of Monday or the beginning of Monday. Another reason to go over to it NOW. I went back and found it very rewarding to fill out.

First things second: Dr. Cvetkovich says that question is meant to assess “how people evaluate their own knowledge about what is happening regarding security at the border.” That definition makes the question much easier to answer.

Tsunami Warning Signs.
I toured around the Point to see if there were multiple tsunami warning road signs and indeed found a total of eight more such signs (and there may be more I missed, of course.). They are of two types: the first indicating a ‘tsunami evacuation route’ and the second indicating a ‘tsunami hazard area’ (in case of earthquake, go inland). Interestingly (and this will be meaningful only to those who know the Point’s geography and street names, alas), I found few signs near the south or west-facing beaches, which presumably would bare the major brunt of a tsunami wave. On South Beach, just off APA, there is one ‘hazard’ sign and a second hazard sign near Lighthouse Park on Marine. There may be signs on the beaches themselves but I did not see any. In addition, there is a ‘hazard’ sign on Tyee at APA heading south toward the marina and, for the east facing Maple Beach, there is a ‘hazard’ sign high up on the hill on Boundary, which would probably not be a hazard area because there is a distinctly steep incline at that point down to the water.

Tsunami evacuation routes are identified on Boundary heading south toward Benson and then no more markers. So after Benson, you are on your own. Marine Drive at Lighthouse Park is marked as an evacuation route up to Gulf and then right straight up Marine to Roosevelt. It's a little daunting when you come to the sign that says Roosevelt is closed because it would appear that you need to evacuate via Roosevelt, but you are eventually directed to McKenzie Road and then back out to Tyee. Along with Tyee itself, those are your major evacuation routes. This may have been brought to you as a public service, but it does seem to me that the signs might just as well have read:

In Case of Earthquake or Tsunami Report, Go to Canada!

Exit North

Point Roberts and Roberts Creek, B.C., both lie in an earthquake zone, although quakes don’t happen often and, since I’ve been here, there have been only one or two that could be actually felt. Nevertheless, earthquakes, in a coastal area, can give rise to tsunamis, so I suppose it is not surprising that there is a page in our B.C. phone book telling us what to do in case of a tsunami. (Don’t go to the beach, mostly.) We are located within view of the ocean but the Sunshine Coast is mostly on a slope up to the mountains so the prospect of a tsunami having any effect on us personally—with respect to waves crashing in upon us—is about zero, I believe. Point Roberts, by contrast is not just coastal but a peninsula, and it is not sloping up to a mountain, so a tsunami here might be more problematic.

Thus, I was not entirely surprised today to see a new Tsunami Warning sign on the main road. I doubt if Homeland Security is looking out for us on this front, so I can only imagine that the state of Washington decided it needed to post such signs all along the coast. I am also guessing that the overall plan at the state level was to give everybody the same kind of warning. I guess this because what our warning sign says is “Tsunami Evacuation Route” followed by an arrow pointing north, which would be the way to Canada and not to the ocean. Under five square miles, I am reminding you, is what we are working with here. Surrounded on three sides by water. And only one route that gets you off the peninsula. So, yes, I suppose that would be the evacuation route. But it is unlikely that anyone would try any other route because all the other roads lead to the ocean.

It does not really seem helpful. How, for example, will you know there is a tsunami coming so that you will drive to the evacuation route? Will you have to show your passport as you cross the border while you are evacuating? If you don’t have your passport with you at that moment, will they send you back to the tsunami? Will the Canadian border agents be concerned about whether you are bringing things into Canada…like alcohol or apples…that you shouldn’t be? Will you have to tell them how long you will be staying in Canada? And how long will you be staying in Canada? That's what we need to know.

Somebody drove up here from somewhere in the rest of Washington to bring us this sign. I wonder why or at least I wonder what they were thinking when they brought it?