Bill would boost NOAA’s tsunami preparedness budget by 35%, require planning for a PNW megaquake Legislation complements Sen. Cantwell’s 5 Point Plan to bolster U.S. emergency preparedness
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced the bipartisan Tsunami Warning, Research, and Education Act of 2026, a bill to reauthorize the Tsunami Warning and Education Act for five years.
“The State of Washington faces one of the greatest tsunami threats in the world, putting coastal communities, critical infrastructure, and thousands of families at serious risk,” said Sen. Cantwell. “Preparation will save lives, so this bill develops a comprehensive national readiness strategy for a Cascadia event, strengthens our nation’s tsunami warning systems, and improves coordination between federal, state, local, and tribal partners.”
Sen. Cantwell co-introduced the bill with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) as co-sponsors.
Washington state faces significant tsunami threats from multiple sources, including a major Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, offshore and regional seismic events including within Puget Sound, submarine landslides, and distant Pacific earthquakes, any of which could generate dangerous waves and devastating flooding affecting coastal communities, ports, and critical infrastructure.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 600-mile fault just off the Washington coast, is capable of producing a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that could generate a tsunami that reaches coastal communities in minutes, leaving little time for warnings and evacuations and making coordinated disaster preparedness and response planning essential. Scientists estimate that such an earthquake occurs approximately once every 300 to 500 years. The last known megathrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest was on January 26th, 1700, just over 300 years ago, and physical evidence and historical accounts indicate that the resulting tsunami obliterated some Indigenous coastal communities in Cascadia, permanently altered shorelines, and still had enough energy to cause damaging but mostly non‑fatal flooding across the Pacific in Japan.
The Tsunami Warning, Research, and Education Act of 2026 would:
- Reauthorize appropriations for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tsunami programs at $35 million for fiscal years 2027 through 2031, an increase of $9.235 million (35.8%) above fiscal year 2026 appropriations.
- Require NOAA to evaluate and improve tsunami alert communications, maintain fail-safe tsunami warning capabilities, and conduct annual tsunami warning drills with federal, state, local, and tribal partners.
- Expand NOAA’s coordination efforts on tsunami warnings, preparedness, and response to include tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.
- Direct the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to evaluate the nation’s emergency preparedness for a Cascadia Subduction Zone event, and direct NOAA to implement a strategy to improve tsunami preparedness based on GAO’s review.
- Protect NOAA’s access to seismic data from the Alaska Earthquake Center.
- Require each Tsunami Warning Center to hire a Tsunami Warning Coordinator to coordinate with state, local, and tribal emergency managers.
Sen. Cantwell has led Congressional action to prepare and protect Americans from tsunamis and other emergencies. She co-authored and championed the Tsunami Warning, Education, and Research Act of 2017 that was signed into law as part of the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017. After the 2011 Japan tsunami, she introduced and supported amendments and measures to deal with tsunami debris crossing the Pacific, pressing NOAA to step up monitoring, research, and funding so West Coast communities were not left to handle debris and associated ecological risks alone. Cantwell also played a key role in passage of the Tsunami Preparedness Act (S.50) in 2006 which expanded and upgraded the national tsunami detection and warning system, created a federal–state hazard mitigation program, and funded research and community preparedness for at‑risk coastal areas.
In November 2025, Sen. Cantwell sent a letter to NOAA Administrator Dr. Jacobs demanding NOAA protect access to real-time seismic data from the Alaska Earthquake Center that is needed for tsunami alerts after grant funding for the data was cancelled.
Today’s bill introduction complements Sen. Cantwell’s ongoing efforts to bolster the United States’ emergency preparedness, which she outlined in a 5 Point Plan and letter to President Donald Trump in July of last year.