As others have said, the other limitation was logistic. How do you warn millions of people who line tens of thousands of rural coastline? Radio broadcasts? How many people are listening? I’d be surprised if 5 percent were listening at the given time.
Early warning alarm system? If the inundated area has, say, 50,000 miles of coastline–quite possible given the thousands of islands in Indonesia alone–and the governments of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc erected tsunami alarm towers at one mile intervals, the tens of thousands of needed towers would divert precious resources from basic human services.
In addition, on one website I visited (see above), researchers state that 95 percent of tsunami warnings give what could be descrbed as false positives. Eventually, people blow off such warnings. Moreover, according to one researcher at one of the Indonesian websites I visited, his experience with natives in rural Indonesia is that they had very little comprehension of what tsunamis are all about, which raises the need for a massive public education campaign among 200 million Indonesians alone. Of course, they are more concerned with day-to-day issues, such as hunger, shelter, AIDS, etc.
The loss of so many tens of thousands of innocents is tragic beyond words. But to put it in perspective, about 4.5 million Americans will die in the next 10 years due to tobacco addiction–and tens of millions more worldwide. That’s obviously comparing apples and oranges, but it is an illuminating factoid, just the same. The Third World cannot afford to properly warn its citizens of tsunamis.
First, stop using Hollywood movies for your reference guide. Second, there was more than one wave.
You might want to check the thread I started about comparing other natural disasters/tsunamis. The highest recorded tsunami wave in the USA was over 1700 feet (not meters) but was very isolated, caused by a landslide in Alaska. Don’t know if there have been higher, but it’s hard to imagine much higher. Most are more in the sub-100 foot size range (still huge). The sizes I’ve heard mentioned are more like 5-10 meters for this one. The size varied by the wave encountered. Most witnesses have said there were six main waves. One eye witness account says a lot of the damage was done by the water sucking back out and taking everything with it more than the waves themselves.
Not to be too nitpicky, but the 1,700 meter event was not seismic. Essentially, it was a big, big, big splash. Not that that distinction means much if you’re nearby in a kayak.
The majority of tsunami are less than 10 feet. Of course, a 10-foot wall of water is devastating. Put a suburban US community on an Indonesian beach during the recent seismic event and that wave would obliterate it.
Second, there was more than one wave.