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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (92360)	12/26/2004 7:48:52 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793851

Exactly what I have been saying. Warnings could have saved thousands: USGS December 27, 2004 - 6:22AM A warning centre such as those used around the Pacific could have saved most of the thousands of people who died in Asia's earthquake and tsunamis, a US Geological Survey official said. None of the countries most severely affected - including India, Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka - had a tsunami warning mechanism or tidal gauges to alert people to the wall of water that followed a massive earthquake, said Waverly Person of the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre. "Most of those people could have been saved if they had had a tsunami warning system in place or tide gauges," he said yesterday. "And I think this will be a lesson to them," he said, referring to the governments of the devastated countries. Person also said that because large tsunamis, or seismic sea waves, are extremely rare in the Indian Ocean, people were never taught to flee inland after they felt the tremors of an earthquake. Tsunami warning systems and tide gauges exist around the Pacific Ocean, for the Pacific Rim as well as South America. The United States has such warning centres in Hawaii and Alaska operated by the US Geological Survey. But none of these monitors the Indian Ocean region. The 8.9-magnitude underwater quake - one of the most powerful in history - off the Indonesian island of Sumatra devastated southern Asia and triggered waves of up to 10 metres high. US seismologists said it was unlikely the Indian Ocean region would be hit any time soon by a similarly devastating tsunami because it takes an enormously strong earthquake to generate one. "That's really what has created all of these problems - is that the earthquake is just so massive," said Dan Blakeman, a USGS earthquake analyst. But Person said governments should instruct people living along the coast to move after a quake. Since a tsunami is generated at the source of an underwater earthquake, there is usually time - from 20 minutes to two hours - to get people away as it builds in the ocean. "People along the Japanese coasts, along the coasts of California - people are taught to move away from the coasts. But a lot of these people in the area where this occurred - they probably had no kind of lessons or any knowledge of tsunamis because they are so rare." A major tsunami, a Japanese word meaning "harbor wave," occurs in the Pacific Ocean about once a decade. It is generated by vertical movement during an earthquake and sometimes incorrectly referred to as a tidal wave, according to the Web site of the US National Geophysical Data Centre. Because of the lack of monitoring mechanisms, the US Geological Survey had no access to government or scientific information in the areas affected by the latest tsunamis. "I've been talking to our tsunami people and they have no contact with any of these nations on the tsunamis," said Person. "We don't have anyone there. We get it from the press.