Kodiak wants dispatch to sound tsunami sirens without waiting for a federal alert

On an island where a tsunami could arrive before a warning does, Kodiak wants to give its own dispatchers the power to sound the sirens the moment they see the signs — without waiting for the National Tsunami Warning Center to issue an alert.

That's the heart of a draft policy before Kodiak's Local Emergency Planning Committee this week. It would make the sirens sound immediately on any federal tsunami warning, but it also adds a local trigger: if dispatch observes the signs of a tsunami — a sudden retreat of the ocean, a hard offshore earthquake — they could set off the sirens on their own, buying minutes that could matter on a coastline where the wave and the warning can be in a race.

The committee takes up the draft at its quarterly meeting Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Kodiak Fire Department training room. It remains a draft until the committee acts, and the meeting is open to the public.