National Report of France

National Report OF FRaNCE

 

 

BASIC INFORMATION                 

 

1. ICG/ITSU National Contact:

            Name:                          Schindelé François

            Organization:                Département Analyse Surveillance Environnement

            Postal Address:            BP 12 91680 BRUYERES LE CHATEL FRANCE

            E-mail Address:            francois.schindele@cea.fr

            Telephone Number:            (33) 1 69 26 50 63

            Fax Number:                       (33)  1 69 26 70 85

            Cellular Telephone:                   

 

2. Primary Warning Recipient

            Name:                          Reymond Dominique

Responsible Organization: Laboratoire de Géophysique (LDG/Pamatai)

            Postal Address:            BP 640 Papeete Tahiti Polynésie Française

            E-mail Address:            reymond.d@labogeo.pf

            Emergency Tel. Number: (689) 82 80 25         

Emergency Fax Number: (689) 83 50 37

            Cellular Telephone:       

           

3. Tsunami Advisors

 

            Name:                          Direction de la Protection Civile

            Postal Address:

            E-mail Address:

            Emergency Tel. Number:

            Emergency Fax Number:

            Emergency Cell. Phone:

 

Name:                                      Centre Polynésien de Prévention des Tsunamis             

Postal Address: BP 640 Papeete Tahiti Polynésie Française

            E-mail Address:            cppt@labogeo.pf

            Emergency Tel. Number:            (689) 82 80 25

            Emergency Fax Number:            (689) 83 50 37

            Emergency Cell. Phone: 

 

4. Local Tsunami Procedures

           

            The only local tsunami of very small occurrence are generated by cliff failure or submarine landslide. No local tsunami procedure are implemented

 

5. Distant Tsunami Procedures

 

What organization becomes aware of tsunamigenic events from a distant source:

 

The Centre Polynésien de Prévention des Tsunamis implemented by the LDG/Pamatai.

 

 

What actions does this organization take with regard to tsunamigenic events from a distant source?

 

An alert message with recommendations on the actions to be taken is sent to the Direction de la Protection Civile that informs the general public and the media.

 

 

What are the criteria for initiating tsunami mitigation procedures?

 

A color-code of warning which is a function of the time delay and seriousness of the danger, has been adopted to facilitate the progress of actions during real warning.

The seriousness of the danger is a function of 2 parameters :

-         the delays available (3,6,9 hours)

-         the event's magnitude, as established by the scalar seismic moment given by TREMORS system.

 

 

 

 

YELLOW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warning at the Laboratory

Warning for Civil Defense, High authorities, State Governors, and  Territorial Government, but no action required immediately. Further evolution of the warning to depend on several parameters, including the earthquake's location, tide gauge readings, external information, and reports by PTWC or other warning centers. The warning can be cancelled at any time based on external information or other reports.

 

 

 

 

   Delay > 9 hours

   and Mm > 7.0

 

 

ORANGE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warning of Civil Defense, City and Local Authorities and Municipalities, Police Headquarters, and other emergency responders, but a severe danger of tsunami has not been confirmed. The time delay is 6-9 hours before the tsunami arrival, and the population has not been informed of a possible evacuation.

 

 

 

   Delay > 6 hours

   and Mm > 8.0

 

 

 

RED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imminent danger (less than 3 hours), or very severe danger of tsunami. General warning for evacuation of population along the coast, boats in harbors, and airport.

 

   Delay > 3 hours

   and Mm > 8.0

  -----------------------

   Delay > 9 hours

   and Mm > 9.0

 

 

 

 

What actions are taken in response to warnings issued by PTWC during intersessional period?

 

Own TREMORS seismic stations are checked.

 

A proposal for a decision about the emission of a tsunami warning is prepared by CPPT and transmitted immediately to the Civil Defense.

 

 

6. National Sea Level Network

 

At the present time France has four (4) sea gauges installed in harbours in French Polynesia, maintained by LDG/Pamatai, PTWC and the University of Hawaii :

-         one in Papeete (Tahiti harbour)

-         one in Rikitea harbour (Gambiers Islands)

-         two in Marquesas Archipelago, one in Taiohae (Nuku-Hiva) and one in the Tahauku bay (Hiva-Oa)

 

 

7. Information on Tsunami occurrences

 

No local tsunami occurrences in 2001-2003.

The only distant tsunami detected was the 22 January 2003 Colima-Mexico tsunami generated by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. On the Hiva Oa recent tide gage records, several waves of a few cm of amplitude and arround 20 minutes of period arrived just after the theoretical arrival time of the tsunami.

 


 

 NARRATIVE

 

SEA LEVEL Network

The French Polynesia sea-level network has been largely improved during the last 2 years.

A new tide gauge was installed in January 2003, in Hiva Oa Island, Tahauku bay. This bay is well known for its properties of extreme amplification for tsunamis coming from South and Central America. This project financed by the French Government, was the support of PTWC. PTWC prepared and installed the equipment, and provided its expertise to the CPPT staff.

The data are sent to PTWC in real time via Handar Goes DCP. They are retransmitted to the CPPT (Centre Polynésien de Prévention des Tsunamis), by TELEX. The data are plotted in quasi real time on a dedicated computer.

In the same time, we take benefit of this mission to Marquises Island to help PTWC staff to install in a new place and update the Nuku-Hiva tide gauge.

 

 

TREMORS Station

One broad band station was installed in New Caledonia (DZM Station). TREMORS is implemented in IRD facilities in Nouméa and in DASE in France. This new station gives good detection and estimation of the tsunami risk for the South West Pacific region, from Indonesia to the South of New Zealand.

The results are sent and publish in real time on the European-Mediterranean web page (www.emsc-csem.org).

 

The TREMORS System has been upgraded. In addition to warning computed on the Mm magnitude and scalar seismic moment Mo, a seismic warning has been implemented on the P wave: it is based on the ratio STA/LTA (Short Time Average, Long Time Average) which can trigger a warning immediately on big P wave (for example waves greater than 50 time the seismic noise level).

The recognition of the slow earthquakes, following the criteria given by Okal and Newman (Teleseismic estimate of radiated energy: the E/Mo discriminant for tsunami earthquake, 1998). The computation of the E/Mo discriminant is done interactively in a graphical interface, just by selection of the P wave.

 

 

Evolutions of the tsunami emergency plan in French Polynesia.

 

Taking into account the evolutions in technology and data analysis, a new tsunami warning plan has been re-evaluated and updated in collaboration with Civil Defense. Also, a color-code of warning which is a function of the time delay and seriousness of the danger, has been adopted in a similar way than Meteo-France for typhoon warnings, to facilitate the progress of actions during real warning. The seriousness of the danger would be a function of 2 parameters : the delays available (3,6,9 hours) and the event's magnitude, as established by the scalar seismic moment given by TREMORS system. The next Table shows the color scale of warning as a function of the time delay (depending on the concerned regions) and magnitude. The time delays were simply set at 9 hours, 6 hours, and less than or equal to 3 hours, and the actions corresponding to each color were set to be :

 

 

 

 

YELLOW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warning at the Laboratory

Warning for Civil Defense, High authorities, State Governors, and  Territorial Government, but no action required immediately. Further evolution of the warning to depend on several parameters, including the earthquake's location, tide gauge readings, external information, and reports by PTWC or other warning centers. The warning can be cancelled at any time based on external information or other reports.

 

 

 

 

   Delay > 9 hours

   and Mm > 7.0

 

 

ORANGE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warning of Civil Defense, City and Local Authorities and Municipalities, Police Headquarters, and other emergency responders, but a severe danger of tsunami has not been confirmed. The time delay is 6-9 hours before the tsunami arrival, and the population has not been informed of a possible evacuation.

 

 

 

   Delay > 6 hours

   and Mm > 8.0

 

 

 

RED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imminent danger (less than 3 hours), or very severe danger of tsunami. General warning for evacuation of population along the coast, boats in harbors, and airport.

 

   Delay > 3 hours

   and Mm > 8.0

  -----------------------

   Delay > 9 hours

   and Mm > 9.0

 

 

Preliminary Focal Mechanism Determination (PDFM)

This project has been started in 1997 with the goal of getting early solution of focal mechanism for strong earthquake in a context of tsunami warning. A good knowledge of the seismic source is obviously of crucial importance in tsunami warning because the tsunami excitation is strongly dependant of focal depth, earthquake size (seismic moment), and fault geometry. In one hand for recognizing a true shallow thrust faulting event is of great importance for issuing a true warning, on the other hand, it is a matter of fact that tsunamis are poorly excited by shallow (even big) event with pure strike slip fault geometry (quake of Macquarie Isl. .of June 1985 and Balleny Isl. of mars 1998).

In the PDFM project the moment tensor is obtained from the inversion of surface wave spectra (Rayleigh and Love). In fact, we want to use the benefit of the analysis of each TREMORS stations, which send automatically the surface wave spectra via email to a central laboratory : spectra are ready for the inversion.. At the present stage it is not fully automated, and needs still operator intervention.

In 2002 and 2003 more than 25 focal mechanism were published in the EMSC web page.

PDFM was also tested to study large historical earthquake, for which no definitive focal mechanism has been published. As PDFM method needs only spectral amplitude without the phase information, there is no need of precise timing correction used for the phase velocity (that are used for standard inversion of moment tensor). Thus, the method was applied to study the large Banda Sea earthquake of February 1, 1938; the results show a very large moment approaching 1022 Nm, with a focal depth of 65 km explaining well the small tsunami observed in this region despite of the size of this earthquake. 

 

A 2 days Tsunami warning exercise in Marquises Islands

To validate the new tsunami warning plan, and in conjunction to the official inauguration of the Hiva Oa tide gauge in February 2003, a 2 days tsunami warning exercise was held in several Islands of South Marquises (Hiva Oa, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva) to test in situ, the tsunami warning plan with local authorities state administrators, municipalities, Police and Fire-man (the general population was not involved).

The goal of this exercise was to identify potential communication problem during warning that might occur between the Civil Defense and local authorities. During this exercise, a realistic scenario of tsunami generated by a 8.4 magnitude earthquake located in Chile was chosen, and CPPT and Civil Defense transmitted one message per hour to local authorities, involving practical actions (inventory of radio, infirmaries, available cars, safe and high places to evacuate the populations …etc.).

At these occasions, several conferences on tsunamis where given in school and municipalities, with a large distribution of educational documents on tsunami phenomenon (The French version of Tsunami the Great Wave IOC brochure), for a better understanding of tsunami and danger preparedness.

 

ITSU Cooperation

The French version of the Tsunami Glossary has been published by France in 1200 copies. France offered to Canada 200 copies of the Glossary.

France has provided to the Associate Director ITIC, all the art-work on a CD-ROM for the publication by Chile of the English and Spanish versions of the glossary.

 

French Antilles  Volcanic Tsunami Occurrence

The Monstserrat volcano is eruptive since 1996. Recently, a large eruption occurred on July 13 2003. Two large explosions occurred between 4:00 and 5:00 UTM. The day after, it was observed that a large part of the volcanoe’s dome disappeared and flewed into the sea.

 

At the time of the explosions, a tsunami of 2 m high was observed in Deshaies in a river. The phenomena of ‘mascaret’ was observed 3 times. In that river several small boats were damaged.

 

Tsunami Observation on French MediterrineanCoast

A strong Mw 6.9 earthquake occured on May 21 2003 on the Algerian coasts, near the city of Boumerdes, about 60 km east of Algiers. This shallow earthquake (less than 10 km) could partly explain the importanty damage on buildings and the high death toll (2500 casualties).

Reports of sea disturbances along the Algerian coasts have been rather poor.

On the southeastern coasts of the Balearic Islands (250 km north from the epicenter), sea disturbance have been clearly observed. Wintnesses have reported waves up to 2 m high, and a mean observed period of 10-12 minutes. 10 boats sunk and several other tens were seriously damage.

 

A few tide gauges have reported seal level variations around the Mediterranean Sea. In Nice (France) 6 waves of 5 to 10 cm amplitudes was observed. The arrival time of the first perturbation is 20:20, 100 minutes after the main shock.

 

Publications

Hébert, H., P. Heinrich, F. Schindelé, and A. Piatanesi, Far-field simulation of tsunami propagation in the Pacific Ocean: impact on the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia), Journal of Geophysical Research, 106, C5, 9161-9278, 2001.

Hébert, H., F. Schindelé, and P. Heinrich, Tsunami risk assessment in the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia) through numerical modeling of generic far-field events, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 1, 233-242, 2001.

Hébert, H., A. Piatanesi, P. Heinrich, F. Schindelé, and E. A. Okal, Numerical modeling of the September 13, 1999, landslide and tsunami at Fatu Hiva (Marquesas, French Polynesia), Geophysical Research Letters, 29, 10, 122-1-122-4, 2002.

Hébert, H., and P.J. Alasset, The tsunami triggered by the 21 May 2003 Algiers earthquake, EMSC-CSEM Newsletter, 2°, 10-12, sept. 2003.

Heinrich, P., A. Piatanesi, and H. Hébert, Efficiency of deep submarine landslides in producing tsunamis: the 1998 Papua New Guinea event, Geophysical Journal international, 145, 97-111, 2001.

Reymond, D., and O. Hyvernaud, Evolution of the tsunami warning plan in French Polynesia and tsunami warning exercise in the Marquesas Islands, Tsunami Newsletter, Vol XXXIV, N° 4, August 2002.

Schindelé, F., D. Reymond, H. Hébert, et P. Heinrich, Les risques naturels d'origine géophysique aux îles Marquises, Géologie de la France, 2, 39-52, 2002.

Schindelé, F., H. Hébert, and D. Reymond, Le risque tsunami en Polynésie française, Géologues, sous presse, 2003.

 

 

Abstracts

Hébert, H., P. Heinrich, F. Schindelé, and A. Piatanesi, Tsunami risk assessment in the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia) through numerical modeling: far-field and local hazards, Coastal and Tsunami Early Warning Systems Worshop, Lagos, Portugal, November 1-3, 2001.

Schindelé, F., and H. Hébert, Tsunami risk assessment in the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia): numerical modeling of trans-Pacific events, Tsunami Mitigation Beyond 2000 Workshop, Cartagena, Colombia, October 5-6, 2001.

Hébert, H.,F. Schindelé, P. Heinrich, A. Piatanesi, and E.A. Okal, Local tsunami hazard in the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia): numerical modeling of the 1999 Fatu Hiva landslide and tsunami, EGS 2002 Meeting, Nice, France, April 2002.

Schindelé, F., and H. Hébert, Parameters controlling far-field tsunami amplitudes and periods: comparison of tsunami generated close to the trench with those under the continental platform, EGS 2002 Meeting, Nice, France, April 2002.

Altınok, Y., B. Alpar, H. Hebert, Z. Düzgit and A.C. Yalçıner, The Effects of the Marmara Tsunamis on the Coastal Area and in the Strait of İstanbul, MEDCOAST 03, Sixth International Conference on the Mediterranean Coastal Environment, Ravenna, Italy, 7-11 October 2003.

Hébert, H., F. Schindelé, Y. Altinok, B. Alpar, and C. Gazioglu, Tsunami modeling in the Marmara Sea (Turkey): risk assessment and study of active faulting, EGS-AGU-EUG 2003 Joint Meeting, Nice, France, April 2003.

 

 

 

Date: 10/09/2003

 

 

 

Name: François Schindelé

            National Representative of France ICG/ITSU

            Dominique Reymond

Director  Centre Polynésien de Prévention des Tsunamis (CPPT) – Tahiti French Polynesia


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