Within hours, Japanese and U.S. tsunami experts knew enough about the massive undersea earthquake off Sumatra to predict its horrific consequences, but by then it was far too late. More than 100,000 people on coasts around the Indian Ocean had already been killed by the monster waves. Warnings were needed in minutes, not hours. Accusations have been levelled at scientists at the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, charging that they were slow to warn of the catastrophic waves sweeping across the Indian Ocean. But the world's most sophisticated tsunami-prediction centre says it did well with only limited data from an area far beyond its jurisdiction. "All these people died unnecessarily," said Nirj Deva, a British member of the European Parliament, who was in Sri Lanka when the tsunamis roared ashore. "Nobody was warned."

A widely published initial response from Charles McCreery, the geophysicist in charge of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, didn't help. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world," he said two days after the epic disaster, suggesting that a lack of telephone numbers prevented a timely warning reaching the threatened coasts.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?R2211342A


From:
Aftermath News
Top Stories - January 3rd, 2005