Washington and other West Coast states vulnerable to tsunamis could see their funding drop as the federal government expands its preparedness program to the East and Gulf coasts, where the risk of deadly waves is low, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report, issued Monday, also questions the program's emphasis on high-tech options, like tsunami-detection buoys, instead of public education and tsunami drills, which may be more effective in saving lives.

Much of the $35 million in extra money appropriated after the disastrous Indonesian tsunami is being spent on detection and warning systems that will be of little benefit to people on the Pacific Coast, the report said.

The biggest danger here is from an earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone, which could send 30-foot waves onshore within half an hour — too little time for many communities to organize evacuations.

GAO urged the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of the lead federal agencies for the program, to carefully evaluate the costs and benefits of its approach before moving ahead.

Some Washington emergency managers agreed with some of the report's criticisms. "We're hopping mad" about the expansion plans, said Tim Walsh, geologic-hazards program manager for the state Department of Natural Resources.

Now, five Pacific states each get about $275,000 a year from the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program. But next year, up to 23 states and territories will be eligible to apply for a share.

If risk assessments are based on population, a city like New York might jump to the head of the list, even though the odds of a tsunami there are extremely low, Walsh said.

He also would like to see more money spent in the small coastal communities, like Ocean Shores and Long Beach.

"The most important parts of the program are those that deal with getting people off the beach," Walsh said. "All these high-ticket items ... are nifty, but we've seen time after time that those high-tech solutions don't need much of a glitch to fail."

Last June, when a magnitude 7.2 earthquake off the California coast triggered a tsunami warning that turned out to be a false alarm, the phone line that was supposed to transmit the alert to Washington's northwest coast failed.

But Eddie Bernard, director of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, defended the investment in technology.

While the tsunami buoys wouldn't provide much warning after a massive earthquake off the Northwest coast, they will play an important role in detecting tsunamis generated by distant quakes. Expanding the buoy system also will reduce the number of false alarms, by quickly determining which earthquakes trigger tsunamis and which don't, he said.

Bernard also doesn't discount the tsunami risk in the rest of the country.

The fact that the Pacific Northwest has been slammed by tsunamis in the past was only discovered in the mid-1980s, he pointed out.

"We definitely need to invest some money in research to determine if there are any hazards on the East Coast."

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com

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