A small retiree town in Washington is under threat of being devastated by a potential tsunami, but they don't have the funds to build the protections they desperately need to save themselves if disaster strikes. 

Ocean Shores, a coastal sandbar town between Portland and Seattle, is home to roughly 7,700 people, with many of them being retirees enjoying the beautiful West Coast. 

Despite tsunamis being a rare occurrence, especially in the US, Washington is situated in a precarious location that does put them at risk for the life-threatening weather event. 

The Evergreen State's outer and inner coastlines are situated on numerous crustal faults and within the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 621-mile convergent plate boundary where two tectonic plates meet, making it prone to earthquakes and tsunamis. 

'If the big one hits, we’re pretty much entirely underwater,' Scott Andersen, the city administrator, told The New York Times. 

The town has been trying to build a tsunami tower, a reinforced vertical evacuation structure, for years, but it has yet to break ground. 

To make matters worse, one tower won't be enough. They'd need at least 23 of them, Andersen said. 

'But we can't even get one built,' he told The Times. 

Ocean Shores started planning the first one in 2018, and it was estimated to cost around $5 million. New estimates show it needs up to $12 million to complete, The Times reported. 

The city has received a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but even that is up in the air, as President Donald Trump has made cuts to the vital federal agency, including ending its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, which helped states with disaster preparedness. 

BRIC has since been reinstated after a federal judge reversed the order. 

Ocean Shores is still waiting on their grant from the agency. 

Town leaders are anxiously awaiting it so the project can get underway, while half the residents aren't even concerned about it at all, Mayor Frank Eleduen told The Times. 

The nonchalance from residents comes from a worry that the structure won't actually survive the storm or that they wouldn't be able to access it in time if an emergency would arise. 

The age of the residents doesn't help their mindset, officials said, as many are older and shrug their shoulders at the potential loss of their life. 

'It if it happens, it happens,' Andersen said of residents' attitude toward it. 

'But of course, everyone will say that until the millisecond it happens,' he told The Times. 

However, Ocean Shores isn't entirely passive about the situation while they wait for the grant to arrive. With the help of the state legislature, they're building a tsunami-safe gym in an elementary school, officials told The Times. 

The high school that is set to follow is also being built with tsunamis in mind. 

Ocean Shores also encourages its residents to buy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) radios to keep in their homes, in case they miss the sirens outside. 

In July, California experienced waves from a tsunami from Eureka to San Diego after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Russia, one of the biggest ever. 

The biggest and most destructive earthquake took place in Alaska in 1964. It came in at a magnitude of 9.2 and the tsunami that followed lasted 11 hours.  

The largest tsunami got waves as large as 1,700 feet and took place in Alaska in July 1958 after a 7.7 magnitude quake struck Lituya Bay. 

The deadliest tsunami took place in 2004 in the Indian Ocean, where it killed 230,000 people across 14 countries.