Alaska Sea Grant debuts tsunami video at NOAA HQ, receives national communication award

Date: 5/26/2004
Contact: Doug Schneider, Information Officer, Alaska Sea Grant College Program, 907-474-7449, fndgs@uaf.edu
NR: SG-2004/NR216

Related Web sites
Ocean Fury: Tsunamis in Alaska
Ocean Treasure: Commercial Fishing in Alaska

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—Kurt Byers, Communications Manager at Alaska Sea Grant, recently presented Sea Grant's new video, Ocean Fury: Tsunamis in Alaska at a NOAA seminar in Silver Spring, Maryland. The showing attracted more than 60 NOAA employees who watched the video and asked questions afterward.

The video features compelling interviews with Alaskans in Valdez, Kodiak, and Seward who witnessed the 1964 tsunamis. In chilling detail, they recall the loss of life and destruction in their communities and how they felt 40 years ago. The video also highlights a Sea Grant–funded computer model used to predict how extensively tsunamis, under different variables, would inundate Alaska coastal areas. The model, created by researchers on the Cray Supercomputer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is a key tool in work being done by the NOAA National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program to help West Coast and Alaskan communities develop tsunami inundation maps and prepare their locales for tsunamis.

Byers also received the National Association of Government Communicators Award of Excellence for the Alaska Sea Grant publication, Ocean Treasure: Commercial Fishing in Alaska.