The U.S. weather agency [N.O.A.A. - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association] didn't have the phone numbers nor staff to alert all Indian Ocean coastal countries when it saw the first signs that tsunamis could be heading their way, its top official said Thursday.
[...]
In the face of stern questioning by some in Congress over whether enough was done, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said his agency did all it was responsible for doing in warning 26 countries in the Pacific.
"We cannot watch tsunamis in the Indian Ocean," said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, the Commerce Department's undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere and a retired Navy vice admiral, noting that no warning system exists for all 11 countries where the death toll has now topped 117,000.
I think that the most important thing is to make sure those 11 countries have warning systems...
I am a little perplexed by this statement though: India's science and technology minister requested an investigation into a report that his country's air force base was told of a massive quake an hour before the tsunami hit its southern shore but disaster officials were notified too late to take action to protect people.
If they have no warning system to show that there is a quake coming...Im assuming that means they have no siren system to warn people? I mean if thats the case, how does an agency warn people without a system?
However, if they do have a siren system of some kind..I guess I would have to wonder how long it took them to notify disaster officials...and why they didnt sound it off right away.
Or if they had no siren system, even if they did notify them an hour in advance...could much have been done? I guess some lives would have been saved...but an hour isnt much time to notify hundreds of thousand of people.
I think its time that the NOAA and the other 11 countries start working on a system to prevent this from happening again.
Of course thats just my opinion....I could be wrong. (Dennis Miller)
"You might be the toughest little whacker. . .but in my world, you're about as worrisome as a cloudy day." (Dutch Dooley)
maybe they have something equivalent to our emergency broadcast channel (?) not sure, but I do know that even here in the U.S. we have problems with the EBC. One of the problems is with Clear Channel buying up radio stations by the thousands across the country, installing automation systems and laying off the human DJ's. Trouble is that the automation systems aren't smart enough to watch local news reports and issue localized warnings over the EBC system for such things as tornados, flash floods, etc. Apparently this has been a problem on more than one occaision and is a point of investigation for the FCC.
Sean Kelly said this in post #3 : maybe they have something equivalent to our emergency broadcast channel (?) not sure, but I do know that even here in the U.S. we have problems with the EBC. One of the problems is with Clear Channel buying up radio stations by the thousands across the country, installing automation systems and laying off the human DJ's. Trouble is that the automation systems aren't smart enough to watch local news reports and issue localized warnings over the EBC system for such things as tornados, flash floods, etc. Apparently this has been a problem on more than one occaision and is a point of investigation for the FCC.
I have problems with the EBC myself. They have those over the TV and the radio...but the problem I have is that they are always doing tests..so if someone turns on the radio and hears it, they automatically assume its just a test, and not necessarily the real thing.
We have a tornado siren and they test it on the first Monday of every month...my son asked me..what happens if on the first Monday of the month there really is a storm or tornado coming in...I tell him that they can tell from the looks of the sky, but I guess thats not always the case, and if a person is inside and is used to hearing on that particular day they probably would just ignore it...as I do every first Monday of the month.
I think there needs to be less tests and although I know they have to make sure its working, its taking the point away from when they use it for real.
There must be a better way.
Of course thats just my opinion....I could be wrong. (Dennis Miller)
"You might be the toughest little whacker. . .but in my world, you're about as worrisome as a cloudy day." (Dutch Dooley)
By Lindsay Murdoch, Herald Correspondent in Simeulue
December 30, 2004
They knew to run on Simeulue, a palm-fringed island closest to the epicenter of Sunday's devastating earthquake.
"Our ancestors have a saying - if there is an earthquake run for your life," Darmili, the mayor of the island, said yesterday. "Thousands of our people were killed by a tsunami in 1907 and we have many earthquakes here."
Only five of 70,000 villagers on Simeulue were killed , all of them in the earthquake that struck at 7.55am last Sunday. Nobody perished in the five-meter-high walls of water that followed.
About 30,000 of the 70,000 population were still camping out in hills and mountains kilometers from the coast. "They fear another tsunami will come," said Darmili. "They will not come down for some time.
So it seems a century old system of "Run for your life" passed down from generation to generation still worked.
and if you look on your map you will see that Simeulue Island is
so close to Banda Aceh (where the most fatalities were) you would wonder why nobody perished in the Tsunami itself?!
The United States will expand its tsunami warning system beyond the Pacific Ocean to include the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, the White House said Friday.
Three weeks after an earthquake and tsunami killed more than 160,000 people in countries bordering the Indian Ocean, U.S. officials unveiled a plan to spend $37.5 million over two years to set up new deep-sea warning systems.
[...]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will deploy 32 new advanced technology deep ocean buoys for a fully operational enhanced warning system by mid-2007, said a statement by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The new system will provide the United States with nearly full detection capability for a U.S. coastal tsunami, allowing response within minutes, it said.
12-31-2004 08:17 PM
I mean if thats the case, how does an agency warn people without a system?
