HORRY COUNTY -- The answer is yes, but they are rare.
Scientists at Coastal Carolina University explain that the threat of a tsunami does exist on the East Coast.
The website geology.com says part of the reason for this low incidence of tsunamis is the lack of subduction zones - the most common source of tsunami-causing earthquakes.
Not a lot of coastal communities and counties are considered tsunami ready. In fact, Horry and Georgetown county are two of only sixty-eight tsunami ready sites in the United States.
In 2006, Horry County became one of the first counties on the East Coast to be officially designated Tsunami Ready. Signs are posted up and down the Grand Strand carrying the designation.
Randy Webster is Horry County's Emergency Management Director and has helped in getting the county tsunami ready. "We are one of only a handful of counties on the east coast, and I believe we are the only county that has all of our ocean front municipal partners as tsunami ready."
"We all had to come together, put together a plan, and put together how we are going to operate if we were to get a tsunami," Webster continued.
If a tsunami were to hit the Grand Strand, Horry County Emergency Preparedness officials have said, we would see a surge of water six to eight feet high pushing inland 300 yards, or just to the other side of Ocean Boulevard.
The Grand Strand area has been evacuated for hurricanes, but responding to a tsunami would be more challenging because there's less time to prepare.
Once the sensor buoys in the Atlantic signal a tsunami, an the Tsunami Warning Center contacts the National Weather Service, there's only about 4-5 hours to get people to safety.
Several guidelines need to be met before an area can be named tsunami ready. Some of these guidelines include multiple methods of receiving NWS tsunami warning information, the ability to communicate a tsunami warning to the local population, and evacuation and response plans.
NOAA finished installing 5 Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART) buoy stations off the East and Gulf coasts and the Caribbean as part of the expansion of the U.S. tsunami warning system in 2006.
Webster also noted that if one were to hit South Carolina, we would only have to evacuate 300 to 400 feet inland and only three to four stories high. It would not be like a hurricane where wind would be a factor.
South Carolina has no history of tsunamis, but neither did Indonesia until a devastating one hit there in 2006.
Are tsunamis something you've thought about in terms of emergency preparedness for you and your family or do you think they're too rare to worry about?
