BBC News chaos as tsunami siren cuts off interview in harrowing moment

A tense BBC News interview descended into chaos as one star, who was live in Hawaii, was interrupted by emergency tsunami sirens as she spoke to anchor Suranjana Tewari. Hawaii, Japan and Alaska are currently being evacuated after a powerful earthquake in Russia, with warnings also hitting the West Coast of the United States and New Zealand.

As Tewari spoke to Kelsea Shepherd, a Hawaii local who was being evacuated from her home, the broadcast was interrupted by loud sirens going off, before Kelsea got an emergency alert on her phone which she read aloud. As the sirens blared, she explained: “Sorry, we have a siren going off now.”

Tewari said: “Just to clarify for our viewers, that’s you getting- is that another tsunami warning you just got?” and Kelsea confirmed: “Yeah.”

She read the emergency alert aloud, telling viewers: “The message says, ‘Siren sounding for tsunami threat two hours out from first wave arrival, estimated at 7:10pm. Evacuate coastal areas. And that was sent by the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.”

Kelsea, who lives in North Shore, elaborated: “The current situation right now is there has been a tsunami threat and the National Weather Service has issued a tsunami warning. Sirens have been sounded across the state.

“We’ve just been advised to move out if you are in those coastal areas that will be impacted. We got some emergency alerts – we’ve had three, one at 2:44 HST, 3:24 and then one about 15 minutes ago.

“I wouldn’t say we were prepared for this, but we did have a tsunami watch about a week ago and so for my husband and I immediately we packed up our 75 hour bags and we are just hoping that all the families can stay safe and get to high ground and hopefully the tsunami will not be harmful to Hawaii and everywhere around the world.”