Calling it a dry run for more serious episodes, federal and state officials said they were pleased with the way government officials here handled yesterday's tsunami scare despite a couple of glitches.

The 7.9-magnitude earthquake that led to fears of a tsunami occurred about 95 miles south of Tonga at 5:27 a.m. Hawai'i time.

All state and county agencies were notified by state Civil Defense within 45 minutes. By 7:39 a.m., the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in 'Ewa Beach called off all warnings and advisories of danger.

If a tsunami had hit Hawai'i's shores yesterday, it would have occurred around 11:30 a.m.

"For our purposes, it was a wonderful, wonderful exercise," said Gerard Fryer, acting director for the tsunami center. "We had an earthquake where there's ... basically nobody to be affected by the earthquake."

Ironically, Fryer was in charge yesterday because the center's higher-ups were attending a tsunami conference in Australia.

The tsunami center's response time, along with quick reaction from civil defense and disaster officials, drew praise from Gov. Linda Lingle.

"I want to commend our state Civil Defense, which immediately activated our disaster response plan after being updated by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center," Lingle said in a written statement. "My initial briefing from Maj. Gen. Robert Lee indicates that all proper procedures were followed, including prompt communication with all first responders and immediate notification to the public." Lee is the head of the state Civil Defense.

Yesterday's alert mobilization occurred amid moves to beef up staffing at the tsunami center and state Civil Defense. Both moves were prompted by the devastating Sumatra earthquake in December 2004 that left more than 200,000 dead or still missing. The tragedy forced many disaster-related agencies to rethink their staffing.

EYE-OPENING EVENT

The tsunami center, which operates under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, only last week switched to staffing its office 24 hours a day. Previously, staff staying over in adjacent buildings were on standby by pager and expected to be in the office within three minutes.

Fryer said he does not believe the change had any significant impact yesterday since the office had to wait for additional information to come from instruments in the South Pacific before it could pinpoint the location of the earthquake.

"The nice thing about having someone up and awake is that they are fully functioning; they're not bleary-eyed, they don't have to wake up," he said. "Now for a local event, something in Hawai'i, then it becomes really valuable to have someone actually in the office because then we have to act really fast."

Ray Lovell, spokesman for the state Civil Defense, said staffing at the agency's Diamond Head office also is expected to go to "24/7" status sometime this summer after getting funding from the Legislature last year.

The agency has a full-time staff of about 33 people. It has clearance for 18 more hires, Lovell said.

Fryer said a Pacific-wide training exercise is scheduled to take place in two weeks — one involving a hypothetical tsunami coming from Chile in South America, another coming from Taiwan. "That will allow everybody to test their communication circuits," he said.

MESSAGE NOT RECEIVED

As successful as the reaction was in Hawai'i, there was one serious international glitch: notification of a potentially dangerous tsunami did not reach officials in Tonga. Exactly what caused the failure is unclear.

"We sent out a message among all of our warning circuits. Apparently all of our messages were received," Fryer said. "There was a problem in Tonga because they had a power outage. And they actually didn't get our initial message. So that's something they're going to have to look at. We're probably going to have to work out an additional messaging scheme for them. But, by and large, this thing worked wonderfully."

But Mali'u Takai, deputy director of Tonga's National Disaster Office, in a telephone interview with the Associated Press, made no reference to a power outage and simply said no warning was received.

"Nobody got a warning through the emergency satellite system in our meteorological office," Takai said. "Judging by the location of the epicenter we would have been caught out without any warning at all because of the system's malfunction."