Civil Defence cancels tsunami advisory

  • Breaking
  • 28/02/2010

By Jennifer Colwill

New Zealand is no longer under threat of a tsunami after the Chilean earthquake.

Civil Defence has this morning cancelled its tsunami advisory, but there are still words of advice for people planning to use coastal areas.

After activating just before midnight Saturday, the National Crisis Management Centre stood down at 9am when the tsunami threat to New Zealand had passed.

“The advisory has been cancelled based on the advice we're getting from our scientific advisors and that advice is clearly the highest waves have peaked,” said David Coetzee.

The initial tsunami warning was downgraded to an advisory yesterday, and that was kept in place overnight.

“We have had events in the past where we saw the largest waves after 24 hours reaching our shores, so we have to be pretty careful,” Mr Coetzee said.

But Civil Defence is still warning people to stay out of the water today.

“Strong currents will prevail. We will not see the typical surges we saw yesterday, but these things are not visible to the eye always, so the safe option is for the rest of the day to still stay out of the water,” Mr Coetzee said.

Civil Defence says its alert system worked well.

But it wasn't happy about complacency from the public – many of whom stayed in the water despite warnings.

“We still saw those few who still thought they knew better and took matters into their own hands.”

Seismologist Bill Fry agrees the tsunami threat was real, and says Civil Defence did not overreact.

Civil Defence says it should be safe to re-enter the water tomorrow.

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source: newshub archive