Maybe I’m a bit sensitive since I was at a beach resort in Thailand recently and two people (I know of at this point) died. But I find this a bit flip in light of the immense tragedy.
In South Asia people do understand science. Communicating quickly may take more than dialing, being that all of these countries may not have the most reliable infrastructure (especially after an earthquake and/or flood) and there are several language barriers. I was in Bangkok that day and I my friends in the US had problems reaching me on the phone.
But on a crowded beach or other area, someone with a radio theoretically could have warned others. Just because there are more radios in the US doesn’t mean Americans listen to the radio more. As someone already pointed out, the practical problem here is that few had a clue what a tsunami was. It isn’t like if someone at the beach yelled “TSUNAMI COMING!” everyone would immediately know what to do.
The key part is that about not enough time to get through.
That’s what really is meant by “we don’t have contact numbers”: not that they can’t find any local contacts at all, but that they don’t have a way to reach someone who CAN do something about it, quickly enough.
:dubious: For most of civilization’s history a deep-sea earthquake would have been undetectable and the tsunami come out of nowhere.
From the reports I’ve heard, a phenomenon of this magnitude had not happened in the Indian Ocean for centuries. What they are used to there are storm surges
Yes. Radio is big business here. It’s rare to find a car without a radio. Most home stereos have radio tuners built in. Every boom box has a radio.
In my house, there are at least ten radios and two people.
2 minis we take to the ballpark,
2 in the car and truck,
1 in the sound system,
3 portables, 2 of them plugged in and ready to rock,
2 old boom boxes that we used to take to work.
I don’t know if the computer counts, but it can get streaming audio from radio stations all over the US. One of my portables is playing a classical music station to me right now. I don’t think we’re unusual among Yanks.
The State Department, of which I am an employee, does in fact have a 24/7/365 operations center that can put callers in touch with any Embassy, Consulate, or Interest Section in a matter of minutes – it’s their job.
However, having worked with the government of Sri Lanka for almost two years, I can tell you that this government isn’t that great when it comes to planning, and even less so when time is a factor. Maybe, if they’d had a week’s warning, they would have been able to move people inland. But to where? And we already have roughly 300,000 displaced persons due to the war.
This was just an example of something scientists didn’t think could happen; and when they realised what was going on, the Pacific Tsunami Research Center did in fact get in touch with embassies in affected countries, but by the time they realised the magnitude of what was happening, the waves had already hit.
Add to that, once the embassy is contacted, they need to be convinced, contact their home country, which then needs to contact a govenor of a province, who may or may not be available, who then needs to convince the head of the local police or military that they need to evacuate the beaches, possibly freaking out cash-rich tourists who come and pump millions into the local economy and don’t like to be told what to do by some provincial police bumpkin. And maybe the police or military don’t speak English, and English is a second language for many/most tourists as well. Mix in that the locals don’t even trust the police. It’s just not going to happen in a (relatively) short time period. It’s not as if they have warning claxons or something down at the beach for stuff like this.
Also, add in all of the people who are out on the water. Once you can contact them they still need to understand the message and get to shore.
Heck, idiot people here are killed in hurricanes all of the time. Either because they won’t evacuate or want to go sightsee. Not thousands, but it does happen. Imagine a nice, sunny day at the tropics, not a cloud in the sky, and you’re going to try and convince people to evacuate.
Here is an animation of the tsunami covering the Bay of Bengal. Note that all but the most distant shore of the most Eastern section on India had already been engulphed within 120 minutes of the shock. Now think how long it took to clear out Manhattan on September 11, 2001 with every television in the city broadcasting the event live.
Two hours at the most to recognize the problem and convey it in a way that would be appreciated by everyone (or most) who heard the warning (and who actually had a means to escape)? Without a recognition of tsunami power that people in Japan, Hawaii, and Alaska grow up with, I am not sure that any sudden alert could have been effective.
The countries in that region actually have begun working on ways to warn people of cyclones and storm surges. It has taken them a while to get them in place, but Bangladesh, for example, sees far fewer deaths each couple of years than they did as recently as the 1970s. However, when the (cash strapped) governments considered expanding their warning system to include tsunamis–with a projected occurrence of once each 700 years–they decided to postpone those efforts until their storm surge warnings were more solidly in place.
Tragic error? Bureaucratic idiocy? Making the best choices with the limited resources available? I think it is tragic enough that it happened without looking to blame the victims for being unprepared for an event that has no record in the common memory.
In the nations bordering the Indian Ocean, there is no seismic warning system in place to detect an earthquake and then a potential tsunami.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center detected the earthquake and sent out a warning that a tsunami might occur; Indonesia and Australia, who participate in the warning system, received a warning. India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives did not because they aren’t part of the system, and apparently the Center does not have contact information for those countries. The article reports that researchers at the Center did everything they could to contact people in those countries:
The article goes on to state that there are measures soon to be in place to deal with future events:
And I also concur with the notion that you can’t predict what people will do when confronted with a natural disaster, no matter how much warning or preparation they receive. When the tsunami hit Hilo, HI in 1946, people ran down to the beach to collect the fish flopping on the sand when the water was sucked out to sea, and were taken by surprise when the wave rolled back in.
As Ringo’s post illustrates, every competent geologist/geophysicist would know immediately that an earthquake of such magnitude and approximate location would be accompanied by a tsunami. But it does take time to gather the data to determine with precision the earthquake’s epicenter and magnitude, and then estimate tsunami force and times of arrival in conjunction with tidal data (which in this case were not available). I suspect that no government, even if it were fully prepared to undertake massive evacuation, would want to act before getting some specific info as to probable impacts (weighing that against the costs of evac). And then there are the various other hurdles that you and ShibbOleth mention.
Just out of curiosity, would not the State Department object to a US gov’t agency getting directly in touch with a foreign government that is not part of some previously-arranged partnership (such as the member nations officially linked to the Pacific Tsunami Warning System)?
any warning system would face the hurdles of:-
(a) credibility. If someone in your coastal town suddenly shouted “Drop what you’re doing and head for the hills RIGHT NOW!” how many of us would do that? Most would fanny around some, trying to get some confirmation, locating the dog, the kids, packing a few odds and ends into the car, go find your pistol, cellphone, credit cards…What about Granny on the other side of town? Screw her, she’ll just have to take her chances, we haven’t got time to call her much less go get her…
(b) rapidity. Overcoming the credibility barrier, plus suspicion of government, plus weighing up the ups and downs of compliance (looting, loss of business, disruption to daily routine, all the way up to loss of life) all takes time and by the time most people decide to leave it would probably be too late.
From what I remember, a lot of people saw the water receding and went out to follow it, sometimes as much as half a mile, thinking it was some odd phenomenon related to the full moon.
Every year or two here in Santa Cruz, we have a couple days of “big waves”. Invariably people go out, stand on the cliffs, and get swept away. They even keep a running total on one of the cliffs of people that die from going out on them, and it still keeps happening.
the pacific tsunami warning centre got out a warning to everyone they could within 20 minutes of the quake. they did not just sit about and say," hhhhmmmm, looks like some countries will get hit by a tsunami." they called, emailed, text messaged, anything! they could do to get the word out.
the last time this area got hit with tsunamis this size was in 1883, not many people remember that. in the united stated we had hurricane amnesia within 40 years of light hurricane action.
from alaska to california, hawaii, and japan, tsunami drills are done, kids are taught what to do in schools. and yet people will still go to look at the tsunami from what they consider a “safe” distance and height.
many people were tourists, i don’t expect that a visitor from say… omaha nebraska, would know about tsunamis. tornados, you betcha, tsunamis not so much, unless they read disaster, science, or geo books.
many of the areas are not easily reached, on purpose, so the person on holiday isn’t bothered. beach bungalows usually don’t have tvs or radios so the person on holiday is carefree. the people in these areas would be very difficult to reach.
without a beach alarm system, rather like the tornado alarms, the chances of getting large areas of beach cleared would be very, very, difficult.
I never really thought about it before, but yeah, we probably do.
I’ve got one in each vehicle, a “boom box” radio that can run on batteries, a small portable that requires headphones, and my aviation transceiver. And we only have two people in my family. The goverment and local officials encourage people to have and listen to radios. TV and radio broadcasts are integral parts of our warning systems. In addition to warning of storms, tornados, floods, and other such natural phenomena, broadcast stations routinely report on such mundane things as which roads have traffic jams during the morning and evening rush hours. It’s sort of an ingrained reflex for Americans (and probably lots of other folks) to turn on a radio or TV as soon as they hear something is happening.
That’s aside from the various “scanners” that allow citizens to listen in on things like police broadcasts, and “ham” radios which are the amateur broadcast stations of private citizens that have a long history and tradition of providing communications during emergencies.
I lived in Monterey, CA in the mid 80’s. My apartment building was right on the Monterey Bay. There was a tsunami warning that came in and was broadcast on all of the TV and radio stations. What I remember is watching people stream down to the shore, to watch the wave come in, cause, they thought, how bad could it be. It didn’t materialize for various reasons but I remember thinking…
you. are. so. freaking. dumb.
Alcohol and hig hilarity.
What it brought home to me was that people, especially American people, have no real understanding of the power of nature. Well, maybe they do now.
I suppose that’s justification for showing some of the disturbing video - to make it clear to folks what is meant by “natural disaster”.
Rather like after the first big hurricaine hit Florida this year you have a lot fewer people arguing about evacuating in front of the second. By the fourth one folks were ready to flee if you just whispered the “h” word.
Nothing like mass destruction and death to make you pay attention.
That said - you’ll always some some drunken idiots running down the the beach to collect fish and pretty shells and watch the “big waves” come rolling in. Just human nature.
The ones I feel sorry for are the ones that just couldn’t know the danger, or knew about it, tried to run, and still didn’t escape.
Been watch a lot of the BBC news lately and eyewitnesses (tourists) said that wall of water ( approximately 3 stories high) made no noise whatsoever. He said it was an eerie silence.
Experts interviewed said that the sea would appear nearly normal until the shockwave, traveling from the epicenter of the quake at 400-600 mph, approaches the shore and slows to 30-40 mph. Then it was just a big wall of water. I guess when you’re an island 3 feet above sea level, there ain’t any place to go.
Really, I think very little of the US. But seriously, is the US in the habit of scientists contacting you from the US with bullshit warnings? Is the US that evil? I happen to work with a lot of Africsan nationals, and even a few US deaf women. If I ordered “DANGER!” and said follow me, likely many would follow me. About half a year ago the building I work in caugt fire, and ordered everyone out. They all did. After that, I grabbed the fire extinguishers, and put the fire out. Company policy says to evacuate the building first. When the people in the big red truck arrived, after a while thety said the building was safe. Isn’t there a Klingon proverb about only a fool fights in a burning house? Convincing the Thai embassy? The US really wants to sack Thailand?
