November 17, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 3A
Meet Al Aya, the man behind the ‘moo’
Thirty years
of tsunami
preparedness in
Cannon Beach
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
There was a time when the
man behind Cannon Beach’s
iconic “mooing” sirens was
skeptical about the need for a
tsunami warning system.
The system that alerts res-
idents of an impending tsuna-
mi threat is about to turn 30
years old. But in 1985, wheth-
er those sirens should exist
was up for debate at a Can-
non Beach Fire District board
meeting.
Al Aya had just retired
and moved to Cannon Beach,
where an old high school
friend convinced him to apply
for an opening on the board.
At his first meeting, he vot-
ed to redirect funding for the
sirens to more “immediately
pressing needs.”
“It’d been 21 years since
the last tsunami in 1964, and
at the time it seemed like a
waste of money to invest in
alarms when these events
were so rare,” Aya said.
But Aya remembers walk-
ing down the beach two days
after the vote and watching a
group of children building a
sandcastle at the edge of the
surf. With no adults watching
them, he wondered how these
kids would know about a tsu-
nami warning and how to get
to safety.
“All of this caused me to
worry whether we’d done the
right thing,” Aya said.
So Aya did research and
discovered the threat of a tsu-
nami hitting the Pacific North-
west was much more likely
than he assumed. Before he
knew it, he was in charge of
establishing the town’s tsuna-
mi alarm system.
Making the “moo”
Before moving to Cannon
Beach, Aya worked as a stat-
istician for a phone company,
gathering data about customer
service.
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
Al Aya looks over equipment in a room on Monday at the Cannon Beach Fire-Rescue Main Station that controls the tsu-
nami warning system.
“I’ve always been pretty
mechanical, but no, I suppose
I didn’t have experience with
this type of stuff before,” Aya
said.
To figure out what equip-
ment was needed, Aya reached
out to nuclear power plants,
which for years had relied on
sirens to warn surrounding
communities in case of a ra-
dioactive accident. At $30,000
a pop, the fire district began
installing the 40-foot tall si-
rens strategically around Can-
non Beach and Arch Cape.
But issues started to arise
when it came time to test the
sirens. Aya worried about how
the public would react after
hearing the loud alarms over
and over for multiple days. He
was concerned the town’s irri-
tation could politically hinder
the project.
“I was emailing with an
author friend of mine, who
is an arch-conservative guy,
about the problem. As a joke,
I thought because the acronym
for our system was COWS —–
and restaurants, where they
learn that the testing is to warn
of an impending tsunami.”
Cannon Beach’s system
was one of the first of its kind
by 1988, and places like the
Hanford Nuclear Reserva-
tion, Depoe Bay and Port Al-
berni, British Columbia, all
modeled similar community
warning systems after Can-
non Beach.
“They don’t moo, though,”
Aya said.
ERICK BENGEL/EO MEDIA GROUP
A siren tower sits near the intersection of Washington
Street and Ocean Avenue in Cannon Beach.
for Community Warning Sys-
tem — that maybe we could
broadcast a mooing sound,”
Aya said. “He thought it was
hilarious, and I figured if some-
one serious like him thought
mooing was funny, maybe less
serious people would, too.”
Thirty years later, it’s Aya’s
voice people hear over the loud-
speaker letting them know “it’s
just a test,” and the prerecorded
“mooing” sound he found in a
BBC sound effects library.
‘Now far safer’
Aya is no longer involved
with maintaining the warning
system. But over the decades
he served on the fire district’s
board, the changes he wit-
nessed in tsunami and earth-
quake safety technology have
been substantial.
What has made the largest
difference has been improved
seismic detection systems. In
the mid-1980s, it was board
While part of the value is
definitely for comedic effect,
Aya said, having an unusual
sound also serves as a built-in
education tool.
“When the monthly COWS
test is run, residents take it in
stride but often are amused by
how startled some visitors are
over the loud mooing,” Aya
said. “So they inquire in shops
policy to evacuate local
hazard areas if any kind of
ground disturbance was felt.
According to Aya’s records,
evacuations of this kind have
happened four times since
1989.
Today, the National Tsu-
nami Warning Center can
alert communities within a
few minutes of a dangerous
oceanic event. The data is de-
tailed enough to inform com-
munities if a tsunami is on its
way. But when Aya first start-
ed, it could have taken up to
45 minutes to get an advisory
faxed, which is an issue when
on average it only takes about
20 minutes after an earthquake
for a tsunami to arrive.
Since Aya’s tenure, board
member Garry Smith said the
fire district has updated sirens
to use digital technology, and
is looking to install two more
COWS by Hug Point and
Arcadia Beach when funds
allow. But much of how the
system runs today is thanks to
Aya’s work.
“If it hadn’t been for Al, we
wouldn’t have this system,”
Smith said. “Before this, we
had to evacuate the old-fash-
ioned way, driving the town
warning people. This is much
safer.”
Typically, warning systems
are managed by county gov-
ernments rather than local fire
districts, Smith said. But Can-
non Beach fights to keep the
system they built on their own.
“If we have a major event,
and we directly get a noti-
fication from the National
Weather Service, we want to
get out the message as fast as
possible,” Smith said. “Some-
times the county waits longer
to make a decision than we
would.”
Ultimately, Aya said, tsu-
nami preparedness is built
household by household
through education and plan-
ning, no matter how many si-
rens are “mooing.”
“But overall,” Aya said, “I
would say people on the coast
are now far safer than they
were three decades ago.”
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