Re: [emergency-msg] Quake waves: "Lack of warning systemintensifies loss"

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Yup.

Thanks, Eliot, it's good to hear from you.

Ciao,
Rex

At 4:45 AM -0500 12/27/04, Eliot Christian wrote:
>This event underscores the need for the kind of public warnings
>that would be issued through the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP).
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   Lack of warning system intensifies loss
>     By Andrew Revkin, The New York Times
>
>    The earthquake that struck northwest of Sumatra,
>  Indonesia, at dawn on Sunday was a perfect wave-making
>  machine, and the lack of a tsunami warning system in the
>  Indian Ocean essentially guaranteed the devastation that
>  swept coastal communities around southern Asia, experts
>  said Sunday.
>
>    Although waves swamped parts of the Sumatran coast
>  and nearby islands within minutes, there would have been
>  time to alert more distant communities if the Indian
>  Ocean had a warning network like that in the Pacific,
>  said Tad Murty, an expert on the region's tsunamis who
>  is affiliated with the University of Manitoba in
>  Winnipeg.
>
>    Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, in fact,
>  scientists  running the existing tsunami warning
>  system for the Pacific, where such waves are far more
>  common, sent an alert from their Honolulu hub to 26
>  participating countries, including Thailand and
>  Indonesia, that destructive waves might be generated
>  by the Sumatra tremors.
>
>    But there was no way to convey that information
>  speedily to countries or communities an ocean away,
>  said Laura Kong, a Commerce Department seismologist
>  and director of the International Tsunami Information
>  Center, an office run under the auspices of the United
>  Nations.
>
>    Phone calls were hurriedly made to countries in the
>  Indian Ocean danger zone, she said, but not with the
>  speed that comes from pre-established emergency
>  planning.
>
>    "Outside the Pacific these things don't occur very
>  often at all, so the challenge is how to make people
>  and government officials aware,'' she said.
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
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