The near-miss of a tsunami and an emergency evacuation: the post-exposure effects on future emergency preparedness and evacuation intentions

In the early hours of January 23, 2018, residents of Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada, awoke to the sounds of the community’s tsunami warning system, alerting them of the need to evacuate. While the emergency evacuation successfully occurred, the tsunami, fortunately, did not. This event has provided an exceptional opportunity to understand how residents perceive near-miss events and how an evacuation experience due to a tsunami threat influenced residents’ views towards emergency preparedness and future evacuation intentions. The results of our survey, completed by four-hundred fifty-seven households, reveal a partial let-down effect for those living within the tsunami inundation zone and a partial wake-up for those living outside the zone. For those within the risk region, no change in perceived risk was found post-event; however, households in the high-risk region indicated greater levels of worry or fear towards future evacuations compared to those outside the risk region. No differences were found in the number of households who had preparedness plans in place when compared by risk zones; however, those living within the tsunami inundation zone indicated higher levels of intention for creating an emergency plan post-event. Of importance, those who experienced difficulties in evacuating reported significantly lower intentions for future evacuation, higher levels of worry, and a stronger sense of disapproval towards the evacuation as compared to those who did not experience difficulties. Additional contributions of this paper include recommendations for officials responsible for initiating and managing an emergency evacuation.