PORT ANGELES — Debris from the tsunami that ravaged northern Japan last March will arrive on North Olympic Peninsula beaches in 2013, Clallam County emergency managers told commissioners Monday.
Penelope Linterman, Emergency Management program coordinator, said the county will work with federal and state authorities to devise a plan to handle the material as it comes ashore.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, will be the lead agency.
“They have seen things like full houses, partial houses, boats, quite a lot of stuff,” Linterman said.
The tsunami was triggered by the magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake off the coast of Japan on March 11.
Most of the debris that didn’t sink is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Several fields of debris
“They’re changing the term from debris field to fields,” Linterman said. “Apparently it’s several areas. Some estimates are that it’s 1,000 miles wide and 2,000 miles long, but it’s also dispersed.”
Linterman said the best source of information on the debris fields can be found at www.marinedebris.noaa.gov.
The NOAA site provides a list of frequently asked questions, including when it will hit the U.S. and where to report the stuff.
“If human remains are found, they need to be reported to law enforcement, and that could be in shoes,” Linterman said.
Some wind-driven floats washed up near Neah Bay, Kalaloch and Rialto Beach in early December.
The black, 55-gallon floats also have been spotted on Vancouver Island.
Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham gave a well-attended presentation on the tsunami debris at Peninsula College on Dec. 13.
About 25 million tons of debris is expected to make landfall from southern Alaska to California, possibly in volumes large enough to clog ports, Ebbesmeyer said.
Computer models
Computer models predict some of the material will enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca and move as far east as Port Townsend.
“There’s a lot of unknowns,” Linterman said. “The bulk of it probably will not be arriving until next year.”
NOAA has released a 12-minute podcast on when and where the debris will most likely land on the West Coast.
The podcast can be heard at www.tinyurl.com/7qv6wq4.
“It’s kind of a horrible thing to contemplate with all the loss of life, property and so forth, but there could potentially be some research value in reporting where this stuff is found,” said Commissioner Jim McEntire, a former Coast Guard captain and former Port of Port Angeles commissioner.
“We all know what happened and when it happened, but oceanographers want to have that kind of data so that they can understand these current patters and wind patterns.”
Commissioner Mike Doherty said NOAA and other agencies will monitor the behavior of the debris as it approaches Hawaii.
“So they’ll learn from that, devise a plan and polish it up as it gets closer here, with more information about how much quantity and what type of debris,” he said.
County Administrator Jim Jones noted that nearly 50 miles of beaches in Olympic National Park cannot be accessed by vehicles for debris removal.
Doherty said the initial concerns over radiation in the debris fields are being refuted by scientists.
According to NOAA, the consensus is that radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is “highly unlikely.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
