Tsunami Warnings

Rescuers searched for survivors on Sunday, a day after one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history rocked Chile, killing at least 392 people, leaving many more missing, toppling buildings and freeways, and setting off sirens thousands of miles away. Authorities lifted tsunami warnings Sunday after smaller-than-feared waves washed shores across the Pacific, including Southern California, Hawaii and Japan. Scattered looting broke out Sunday in some of the most heavily damaged areas of Chile, where residents were without water or electricity.

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra early today, triggering another tsunami warning as rescue crews searched the rubble from a magnitude 8.2 temblor that killed at least five people a day earlier. Buildings shook as far away as Singapore. In Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, more than 370 miles from Wednesday's epicenter, buildings swayed, sending office workers and high-rise residents running into the streets.

A powerful earthquake struck Tuesday off southwestern Taiwan, triggering a tsunami warning on the second anniversary of the waves that killed more than 200,000 people in southern Asia. Tuesday's quake hit just offshore from the township of Hengchun on the island's southern tip, killing two members of a family whose four-story home there collapsed. Six other members of the family were rescued from the rubble early today, the National Fire Agency said.

Crescent City, Calif.,where 11 died in a tsunami in 1964, was hit last week by a wavecaused by a quake off the Russian coast. This time no one died andthere was little damage when a surge estimated at about 5 feet flowedinto the harbor. The earthquake was monitored by the Deep OceanAssessment and Report of Tsunamis, or DART, a system of sensors andbuoys that monitors earthquake and tsunami activity. An alert wasissued last week, but it was canceled more than five hours before thetsunami struck.

When news of a big earthquake hits in the middle of the night, it takes geophysicist Bruce Turner five minutes to fumble for his beeper, throw on a coat, scrape ice off his car windshield, drive a mile to work and transmit a tsunami alert from the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center. These few minutes, essential to communities in a tsunami's path, will no longer be wasted on commuting when the center goes to round-the-clock staffing in April.

Californians reacted with sympathy and horror to the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people in December but, naturally enough in a coastal state, we got a few jitters too. Oh well, we soothed ourselves, at least here in the developed world we have a tsunami warning system. We never thought to ask ourselves what the heck to do with it. That became apparent this month when a tsunami warning went out from the alert center in Palmer, Alaska, prompted by a magnitude 7.

In a town still nursing its psychological wounds from a fatal tsunami that struck here four decades ago, nobody gets accused of crying wolf when the emergency sirens start blaring. That's what happened Tuesday night in this crescent-shaped coastal burg of 8,800 residents near the Oregon border after a massive offshore earthquake raised fears of a reprise of the wrecking-ball tidal wave that took 11 lives in March 1964. Crescent City was not taking any chances this time around.

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 struck Tuesday off the coast of Northern California shortly before 8 p.m., prompting authorities to issue rolling tsunami warnings for coastal areas from Alaska to the Mexican border. There were no immediate reports of significant damage or injuries in communities closest to the epicenter, including Crescent City, the site of a 1964 tsunami that killed 11 people and washed away 29 city blocks.