
So, now I read in the Chicago Tribune that lives could've been saved had there been a system in place in the Indian Ocean's rim countries. Such a system exists for the Pacific Ocean
For 40 years, governments around the Pacific Ocean have known the giant waves caused by massive undersea earthquakes could reach across thousands of miles of ocean and devastate coastal areas, and they had prepared accordingly.I guess the lesson is: Prepare for the worst.
...
Only after the first waves hit Sri Lanka did workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and others in Hawaii start making phone calls to American diplomats in Madagascar and Mauritius in an attempt to head off further disaster.
The U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka, Jeffrey J. Lunstead, called Hawaii for more information.
Military officials in the Pacific were called and asked to relay warnings to U.S. forces in the Indian Ocean.
"We didn't have a contact in place where you could just pick up the phone," Dolores Clark, a spokeswoman for the International Tsunami Information Center in Hawaii, said Monday.
...
In the Indian Ocean, there is a far less extensive history of tsunamis and no such warning system. Only three of the countries that happened to be members of the Pacific alert system were warned--Australia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Illustration: AFP/Getty Images
Comments