SALT LAKE CITY, UT—In the wake of December’s devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, officials in Salt Lake City declared Utah fully prepared for a similar situation closer to home. 

“We realized we did not have a tsunami plan in place, despite having prepared for virtually every war, rumor of war, famine, pestilence, plague, chaff burning, or any other condition prophesied at the second coming,” said H. Broulim Huntsman, Special Assistant to the Governor for Disaster Planning.  “We live in a basin, and if a killer wave spilled over into our neck of the woods, we’d be toast.”

Critics of the plan believe it’s unnecessary.  “When the second coming occurs, it doesn’t matter whether it’s earthquakes or tidal waves or alien invaders,” complained President Orson M. Richards of the East Stake in Provo, “98% of Utah will have been twinkled away in an instant, and I guess I’m not too concerned about the ones who are left.”

Seismologist Richard Greenburger of the University of Utah agrees with the critics.  “Not that having California fall into the sea wouldn’t be a good thing,” he says, “but it’s not likely, and that’s the kind of thing that’s going to have to happen before we should even begin worrying about tidal wives.”
Experts agree that a tsunami anywhere in the State of Utah is such a remote possibility that it hardly justifies ink in the plan, let alone the expenditure of any state funds to prepare.  State officials are not backing down.

“Remember, with the Lord, all things are possible,” says Huntsman.  “Tsunami, Great Flood, it’s all the same to our Heavenly Father.  We just think it’s best to be prepared.”

Leena Sorenson, a warehouse worker for the State’s Disaster Relief Division, says it’s no big deal.  “Look, we aren’t really doing anything differently,” she says.  “We have roughly ten thousand drums of consecrated oil.  That’s our plan.  It’s the same for everything we worry about in this State.”