With his surfboard tucked under his arm, Alex Felton was ready to stroll a few blocks to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach on Thursday morning when his cellphone erupted with an urgent alert: “TSUNAMI WARNING! You are in danger.”
A seasoned surfer at 31, Mr. Felton had often tackled Ocean Beach’s towering 10-foot waves. For a moment, he considered ignoring the warning and heading into the water anyway. But persistent texts from friends urging him to heed the alert ultimately convinced him to retreat inland instead of toward the surf.
When asked which friends had worried he might make a reckless choice, he grinned and replied, “All of them.”
The entire Bay Area found itself on edge Thursday after a powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the California coast. The tremor reverberated hundreds of miles, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a tsunami warning for Northern California and southern Oregon's coastal regions.
The warning sent shockwaves of its own. Loud phone alerts startled residents, leaving hearts racing as they braced for what felt like the beginning of a disaster movie. Relief came about an hour later when the warning was canceled, leaving many to laugh at the dramatic turn of events.
“It was overwhelming in the moment,” said Johnny Williams, a bookstore owner in Berkeley. “Honestly, it felt like something out of a science fiction film.”
