Winter 2012 Edition By Matthew DeMeritt, Esri Writer This
article as a PDF. When the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, one of the
strongest ever recorded, struck the coast of Japan, it sent a
tsunami Hawaii's way. In a sense, Hawaii had dodged a bullet.
The March 11, 2011, earthquake transferred most of the tsunami's
energy toward Japan's coast rather than toward Hawaii. The wave
that Hawaii experienced was 1 meter high (compared to Japan's
10-meter wave) but still caused millions of dollars in damage to
docks and seacraft but—fortunately—no deaths. The tsunami alert
sent many Hawaiians scrambling to find out if they were in a
tsunami evacuation zone or where the nearest shelter was
located. Requests to Honolulu's government website created a
logjam that disabled the site. During a government meeting to
assess the tsunami's toll, Honolulu technical staff raised the
issue of public access to critical evacuation zone maps during
times of high demand on the county server. "One of the GIS
analysts mentioned that their site