Forty-four tsunami evacuation route signs being installed in coastal areas around the county now point out which way to flee if a big wave hits. The signage is part of the city’s effort to become recognized as “tsunami-ready” by the National Weather Service. Tsunamis are waves created by a quake or landslide in the ocean that last a longer period than usual, resulting in an abnormally large wave reaching shore. “We plan for all risks and all hazards and a tsunami is one of those,” said Donna Faller of the city’s Office of Homeland Security. “While pretty rare, San Diego is considered in a moderate tsunami (prone) area, so we plan for that.” Installation of the signs began in December and will wrap up soon. Faller said the signs were already purchased and the installation costs of $21,000 came from city’s 2008 general fund. “We purchased the signs, but we did not have the staffing at the time to do the outreach component,” Faller said. “We were able to move some of the ’08 monies over to the current year to pick up the cost of this current project.” Twenty-one of the signs are located within Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. Multiple signs are up along Mission Boulevard, West Mission Bay Drive, Sea World Drive, Clairemont Drive and Ingraham Street. Other signs are located at 800 Grand Ave., 800 Garnet Ave., and 1100 East Mission Bay Drive. While the direction of these evacuation signs may seem like common sense to locals, the signs are in place to raise awareness in case a tsunami strikes San Diego, and to help visitors. “They serve those who are not familiar with the area. We have more than 20 million visitors to our beaches every year and those people may not be familiar with where the higher ground is,” Faller said. The signs are one component of the city becoming tsunami-ready. Faller said the city has submitted its draft application to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Another component of the process is tsunami inundation maps, which the state unveiled for the entire coast of California on Dec. 17. The maps can be found at www.conservation.ca.gov. “It means that there’s a greater likelihood that the water could reach you up to a certain point,” said Yvette Urrea Moe, public information specialist with the county’s Office of Emergency Services. “We would recommend to those people living in those areas to know their way away from there.” Local inundation areas include the boardwalk south of Tourmaline, which would be underwater in the event of a tsunami. The maps also show that a tsunami would bring significant amounts of water to areas on Mission Boulevard south of Grand Avenue and that most of South Mission Beach would be underwater as a result. The county is educating San Diegans about tsunamis with videos and information on its website, www.readysandiego.org. A DVD about what to do is also making its way around to local schools. “It tells them what they can do to be safe and what some of the warning signs are,” Urrea Moe said. “Living in San Diego, we’ve never experienced a tsunami, and a lot of people don’t really realize what they’re supposed to do.” Richard Seymour, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography research oceanographer, said the San Diego area has never seen damage from a tsunami. The last tsunami that caused damage in the state occurred in 1964 in Crescent City, near the California-Oregon border. As far as predicting a future tsunami, Seymour said there is not a mathematically or scientifically sound method. What is sound, he said, is predicting the results of a distant earthquake that could potentially produce a tsunami. “We can measure them with a pressure gauge that we have off Scripps Pier,” Seymour said. “We can go into our record from that pressure and actually see the tsunami — the very, very slow rise and fall of the sea level. I don’t think we’re going to be in the situation of the false alarm or false warning we were in for many years.” Even without a surefire way to forecast a tsunami, Seymour said one occurring in San Diego is highly unlikely. He said the most dangerous type of tsunami — one that occurs very close to the shore as the result of a landslide — is not likely to happen given the makeup of the sea floor off local coasts. “Based upon the local geometry of the sea floor, which doesn’t tend to magnify the effect of tsunami waves, the chances of our having anything destructive are extremely small,” Seymour said. But in the event that one does happen, the city is taking steps toward being prepared.