Tsunami Warning System Up and Running

SEWilco writes "UNESCO has announced that their Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System is up and running as scheduled. From the article: 'Twenty-six out of a possible 28 national tsunami information centers, capable of receiving and distributing tsunami advisories around the clock have been set up in Indian Ocean countries. The seismographic network has been improved, with 25 new stations being deployed and linked in real-time to analysis centers. There are also three Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) sensors. The Commission for the Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is also contributing data from seismographic stations."

Comments

A peace of war.

[Anonymous Coward]

" The Commission for the Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is also contributing data from seismographic stations."

Nice to know something good came from the Cold War.

Re:A peace of war.

[minus_273]

as if the fall of communism and socialism were not enough.

Re:A peace of war.

[suffe]

Of course a lot of good came from the cold war, as has come from rather a many wars. If you wanted to you could run around starting wars just for that reason. [Of course, not all wars give birth to good things.] Still, the question one has to ask though is; is it alright for the people of now to ask the people of then to pay the price for benefits we receive. It's almost like compulsory military service; sucks while you do it but after it's over you have some pretty useful skills and some good stories.

And yes, I know I just described war in a rather whimsical way. The point, however, stands.

Won't help the people in India much.

[hopethisnickisnottak]

The biggest problem with my country, India, is that an early warning system won't make much of a difference because there is no way to inform most of the thousands of villages and settlements on the coastlines. In face of this, even a warning hours in advance won't make a significant difference.

At the same time, regardless of these problems, an early warning system like this will save *some* lives, and any life saved is precious!

Re:Won't help the people in India much.

[richdun]

The biggest problem with my country, India, is that an early warning system won't make much of a difference because there is no way to inform most of the thousands of villages and settlements on the coastlines.

That pretty goes for every country in the 2004 tsunami zone. As others have said, a bit more regional and local cooperation is what is really needed - our (U.S.) best seismologists and such knowing that a tsunami is coming is nice, but for those that don't have CNN/BBC/whatever piped into their homes, the news will be late. Your comment is true, but a little too narrow-focused - and typical of the kinds of challenges faced in these situations.

Cheaper system...

[Airconditioning]

Put tracking devices in various animals in the area. Dogs, goats, sloths... whatever. If they all inexplicably go berzerk and start heading for the hills, follow them.

Seriously, it was well reported that the local wildlife at the locations where the Tsunami hit were safe in the hills away from the disaster. What were they sensing?

Looks great on paper, won't do anything

[patio11]

After a conference talking about the responses to the Sumatura (sp?) tsunami I've come to the conclusion that South East Asian Distaster Preparedness Manager is about the worst job ever:

* You've got about three hours to six hours from the time the earthquake is detected to the time the tsunami makes landfall. The US, which has none of the problems I'm about to outline, can barely accomplish a passable evacuation over three days (72 hours).

* In those same three hours, you have to evacuate between several hundred thousand to several million people, spread over multiple countries and an absolutely gigantic geographic region.

* The overwhelming majority of them live in coastal cities which have no significant landmass which is high above sea level.

* Your challenges include the fact that most of these folks do not own a television or radio, many of them do not trust your government (and some will shoot your agents on sight), road conditions are poor and gridlock is a fact of life *every* morning to say nothing of when everyone is taking the one single-lane dirt road to safety, and you've got to coordinate the efforts of multiple national governments, most of which are barely competent in the best of times.

* The first time you have a false alarm and order the *immediate and that means NOW* shutdown of 6+ national economies for a day, your program will get canceled. Murphy's Law being what it is, you will be shut down just in time to miss The Big One.

* Pick an hour, any hour, for the tsunami to occur. If it occurs in mid-morning your populace will be gridlocked and unreachable for warning alerts. If it occurs during the workday, ditto. If it occurs after work hours or, God forbid, during the night you'll never get the news to everybody in time.

US Tsunami response is *much* better than that

[billstewart]

Sure, the Bush Administration's version of FEMA did an atrocious job of handling Katrina, but tsunami response and hurricane response are much different problems, and the tsunami response is designed with the goal of letting people know quickly so they can Run Away, rather than worrying about whose responsibility it is to clean up the damage afterwards.

My wife grew up in Hawaii and California, so while I was learning things in elementary school about "that's the local volunteer fire department siren" and "if the CONELRAD Alert says the Russians are attacking, hide under the desk and kiss your ass goodbye", she was learning things like "that's the tsunami warning siren, if it goes off Run Uphill", and "if there's an earthquake, go stand in the doorway where the ceiling won't fall on you." First decent-sized earthquake after we moved to California, she went over to the doorway and yelled at me for not knowing to do the same thing, but I was just as clueless about that as I was about what the Granny Goose commercials on TV were trying to sell.

When Hurricane Iniki trashed Kauai in 1992, about 6 people were killed, 1400 homes destroyed, and 5000 seriously damaged, but there was enough advance preparation that most people were safe; that's the sort of thing that happens when you've got useful local management, and back in those days FEMA had just been dealing with Hurricane Andrew so they had a warmup round, and they were much stronger politically as opposed to being a dumping ground for Bush the Younger's less competent friends.