Eureka Offers Tsunami Preparedness Workshop for Coastal Zone Businesses in April

A near-source tsunami triggered by the Cascadia Subduction Zone could reach Eureka's waterfront within minutes of the ground shaking, leaving no time for a harborside employer to improvise an evacuation plan mid-crisis. On April 20, the City of Eureka will give businesses in designated tsunami inundation zones the chance to have one already written.

The one-day workshop will run 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Eureka Wharfinger Building, a venue that sits within the coastal flood-risk corridor it is designed to prepare. The program is appointment-based and structured as one-on-one consultations with local public-safety experts from Humboldt Bay Fire, the Eureka Police Department and the Community Emergency Response Team, known as CERT. Each participating business will leave with a customized, written tsunami response and evacuation plan sized to its specific layout, staff and hazard exposure.

The practical value extends beyond documentation. Participating businesses will have the option to register their completed plan with the city, allowing emergency responders across agencies to know a given employer's protocol before a rapid-onset event arrives. That pre-registered coordination is precisely what tends to collapse when warnings are measured in minutes, not hours.

The workshop is open only by appointment. Business owners and managers in tsunami hazard zones should email econdev@eurekaca.gov to reserve a time slot; walk-ins will not be accommodated. The appointment-only format is designed to give each business the full attention of the planners running the session.

Each participant will also receive staff-ready materials they can distribute so that employees who were not present for the workshop understand the plan. The city has described April 20 as the first in a planned series of preparedness workshops, part of a broader tsunami outreach campaign that builds on regional work already underway through the Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group, including updated GIS inundation maps and community drills along Humboldt County's coastline.