Six communities creating a culture of tsunami readiness
“On this World Tsunami Awareness Day, let’s take charge of resilience. By working together we can be tsunami ready – and save lives whenever the waves strike,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his message for 5 November 2026.
“Governments must lead the way by investing in resilient coastal infrastructure, risk-informed land use, and multi-hazard early warning systems. They must also collaborate across borders on science, data and forecasting. But every person, every family and every neighbourhood in tsunami-prone areas also has a vital role to play.”
The six examples below show how communities around the world are already rising to the challenge, creating a global wave of readiness. Schools, residents’ associations, disability organisations and local leaders have shaped each plan from the start, so that warnings and evacuation routes work for the people most at risk of being left behind – older people, persons with disabilities, children and remote communities.
1. Chile’s Valparaíso region takes 300,000+ people to safer ground
On 5 November 2026, World Tsunami Awareness Day, more than 300,000 students, teachers and staff from over 1,000 kindergartens, schools and colleges across Chile’s Valparaíso region took part in an earthquake and tsunami drill. They included more than 6,000 persons with disabilities, including students, and officials stressed that evacuation routes to ground above 30 metres must be safe and accessible for all. According to SENAPRED, Chile’s disaster management agency, every school reached its safe zone within 27 minutes. UNDRR’s head, Kamal Kishore, who joined the drill, said Chile has made tsunami readiness a national priority, and has valuable lessons for other tsunami-prone countries around the world.
- Find out about Valparaíso's tsunami evacuation drill (in Spanish)
2. Tonga asks persons with disabilities what works in an emergency
A 2025 survey by WFP and Tonga’s Ministry of Internal Affairs asked 260 persons with disabilities across six island groups about their experience of disasters – tsunamis among the most common. Radio was the main source of warnings for 89 per cent, and 81 per cent understood evacuation messages and reached safety, yet relatively few took part in community preparedness, and gaps remain in evacuation planning, transport and accessible shelters. Women are also taking on more leadership: in March 2026, UNITAR trained 12 emerging women leaders from six Pacific countries in tsunami risk reduction in Apia, including on disability inclusion.
3. Japan’s apartment blocks become organised refuges for their neighbours
Across coastal Japan, many apartment buildings are designated as tsunami evacuation buildings, giving nearby residents somewhere high to go when there is no time to reach higher ground. A 2026 study of the bodies that manage them found that formal agreements with neighbourhood associations, especially on sharing information during an emergency, were the strongest driver of well-organised evacuation plans.
4. Barbuda’s students help write the island’s tsunami message
In May 2026, Barbuda held a three-day exercise as part of its bid for UNESCO-IOC Tsunami Ready recognition, bringing students and teachers together with community leaders and disaster managers. Students learned about tsunami hazards and evacuation planning, and suggested content for the island’s tsunami awareness campaign. On the final day, both schools joined a community evacuation from hazard zones to safe ground, giving officials the chance to test routes, communications and coordination, and to see what still needs work.
5. An Alaska Native village takes tsunami readiness into its own hands
In May 2025, Ouzinkie – known in Alutiiq as Uusenkaa – became the second Alaska Native community to be certified as TsunamiReady. The village of about 130 people on Spruce Island, near Kodiak, spent nearly three years getting there, with the tribe and the city working together on emergency and hazard plans and maps of the areas a tsunami would flood. The tribe has also secured $2 million to build a tsunami evacuation centre. “We hope to be even better prepared as time goes on,” said tribal administrator Kerry Ivory.
6. A song, a board game and a drill that included everyone in Timor-Leste
On World Tsunami Awareness Day 2025, around 160 students from five schools in Dili learned a tsunami song (listen below!) and played Runami, a board game about evacuation, before evacuating from Kampung Marinir – the site of the 1995 tsunami – to an assembly point. The disability organisation Ra’es Hadomi Timor Oan showed them how to help persons with disabilities evacuate safely.
In each of these places, the community helped design the plan that was put in place to protect them – students leading a campaign, a disability organisation demonstrating safe evacuation, residents’ associations agreeing how to pass on a warning. That is what true community-led tsunami readiness looks like: no one is left out, and no one is left behind.