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Bad Equipment Hurt Tsunami Warning Efforts
I'll leave it to all of you as to just how disgusted I am by this article.BANGKOK, Thailand - Faulty equipment, poor communications and cumbersome bureaucracy are being blamed for the failure of nations around the Indian Ocean's rim to warn communities about to be hit by one of the world's most devastating natural disasters. Who'da thunk it? A sensor system in Indonesia that could have warned of Sunday's huge waves was not working because it had been hit by lightning. In India, bureaucrats faxed a warning of possible disaster to the wrong official. A Thai meteorologist acting on a hunch sent an alert to radio stations, but it doesn't appear the warning was widely relayed. Even if the Indian Ocean had an international tsunami alert system, like one in the Pacific, the warning likely would have come too late for the people of Sumatra, the Indonesian island closest to the epicenter of the magnitude 9 earthquake that set off the killer waves. Indonesian officials said they do have a bare-bones sensor system to gauge the possibility of a tsunami hitting the nation's main island of Java — but it was knocked out by a lighting strike two weeks before the disaster. No hurry to fix that balky little item. Yet, even if had been working, Indonesian officials acknowledge they have no way to alert villages. "Even if we did know about the tsunami, how can we (disseminate) information," said Prih Harjadi of the Indonesian Meteorological & Geophysical Agency. Media reports of the tsunami also didn't prompt any alerts from the agency, he added. "We didn't call anyone because we didn't know who to call." File that excuse with, "Isn't this the way we always do it?" Most residents and foreign tourists in southern Thailand's resort region were caught unaware. "There was no warning from the meteorological department or any other agencies," said Phuket Gov. Udomsak Asawarangkul. An alert of some kind got through to some places — at a few beaches officials yelled through bull horns telling tourists to get off the beaches. Most people got no warning. "The (first) warning was that the ocean went out and people were walking down the beach wondering why there were fish flapping on the sand," said Steve Hall, an Australian who moved to Thailand a decade ago. "By the time they realized, it was too late." Darwin had already entered the building. Kathawudhi Marlairojanasiri, a meteorological department weather forecast chief on duty Sunday, said the office did send warnings to radio and television stations an hour before the first waves hit — on a hunch the quake off Sumatra might trigger tsunami waves. Thai authorities apparently didn't relay it, in fear of scaring tourists with a possible false alarm. "Pesky things those false alarms, always scaring off the rubes." "Five years ago, the meteorological department issued a warning of possible tidal wave after an earthquake happened in Papua New Guinea but the tourism authority complained that such a warning, if it turned out to be false, would hurt tourism," said Sulamee Prachuab, director of Meteorological Department's Seismological Bureau. Wouldn't want to hurt tourism now, would we? "There was a 7.6-magnitude earthquake occurred in the same location in Sumatra five years ago but there was no tsunami," she added. The first word Indians got of the tsunami was on the news after the water roared ashore, even though waves swamped India's Andaman and Nicobar islands north of Sumatra an hour before they reached the southern coast of the Indian mainland. [Bugs Bunny] Stunning, isn't it? [/BB] Officials in southern India who had gotten a report from a military base on a Nicobar island mistakenly faxed the news to the home of the government's former science and technology minister, rather than his successor. "Dag nabbed Rolodexes are so complicated to maintain and operate!" "It looks like they forgot to update their records," said Ashok Kavdia, an aide of the former minister, who was away from home Sunday. Something tells me their employee files are about to be updated. Sri Lanka's president said Thursday that the leaders of a seven-member group of South Asian countries plan to discuss installing a disaster early warning system at a summit Jan. 9. The 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations will discuss the idea next week. For the Nth time. Even a high-tech warning system might not help India, a political analyst said. Nothing else much does. "In such disasters, we require rapid and specific responses. The Indian bureaucracy by its training and conditioning can't do it," said Balbir Arora, a New Delhi-based professor of public administration. Just a sidecourse in the recipe for disaster. Posted by: Zenster 2005-01-01 |
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