East Indies Devastated By Quake, Tsunamis

Checkmite

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Checkmite
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A few hours ago, an 8.9 earthquake (the largest on record since the 9.2 Alaskan quake in '64) shook the ocean floor about 100 miles west of Sumatra. The earthquake and several aftershocks damaged some buildings. A couple of hours later, the resulting tsunamis reached shores all over Indonesia, killing thousands in Sumatra, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and even the eastern coast of Africa. Early death estimates range from just over 5,000 (CNN) to over 10,000 (AP), with numbers expected to rise as rescue workers reach the coastal areas which have been out of communication since the waves hit.

This is serious bad juju, folks. A time of sadness. :(

Story
 
Actually, this happened early this morning (my time - MT), just before I went to bed. The early figures, 150 dead, were expected to rise dramatically by me. The toll now stands (Reuters) at over 11,300. I expect it to go over 20,000.

Ya know, with all of the stupid bickering over almost meaningless stuff that causes scandals and wars, why do we not put more effort into preparing for these catastrophes? There isn't much to be done to avert them, but we could at least, as a technological species of over 6,000,000,000 individuals, use our vast resources in more humanitarian ways to lessen the devastation of just such things. Instead we find it more appealing to feed our war machines and line a select few's pockets with prosperity.

This is just anoher reminder that we, all life on this planet, are here at the convenience and mercy of this world. Not to get too anthropomorphic, but as history has shown, there are no guarantees that the human species will not suffer a death blow at any time by any number of events over which we have no control.

We are ALL equal - as in, we are all homo sapiens. We treat each other with contempt and malice and wonder why nothing ever gets solved. If we want a better world, prepared for these events, we must put aside our idiocies and get down to a goal worthy of a sentient, technological civilization - or quickly fade into geological history and forgotten.

Robert

ETA: I can only hope that Arthur C. Clarke has not been lost. I know that he resides in Sri Lanka, so we will have to wait to see.
 
kuroyume0161 said:

ETA: I can only hope that Arthur C. Clarke has not been lost. I know that he resides in Sri Lanka, so we will have to wait to see.
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I believe he lives near Colombo, which is on the more sheltered side of the island.

--Terry.
 
I wonder which will come first:

Jerry Falwell claiming that they got what they deserved for not believing in Christ, or donating some money and effort to relieve the suffering.
 
In a little town called Parksfield about 50 miles from me is one of the longest and most extensive earthquake prediction experiments in the world. They Chose Parksfield because it is on the San Andres fault and gets more earthquakes than anywhere else in the world. The result of all the monitoring and measuring earthquakes is that there still is know way to predict them. If you cannot predict an earthquake in Parksfield how can anyone ever be prepared.

Even with all the Technological advances we make good old mother earth always will put us in our place.
 
True. But when a 9.0 quake hits somewhere in the ocean, we sure ought to be able to predict the resulting tsunami.
 
I lived and worked in the area between 1997 and 2001 and have friends I haven't been able to reach in Phuket, Thailand and Langkawi, Malaysia. Most of them are yachties and I can only cross my fingers and hope they were either out in the ocean or at least not on their yachts in the harbour.

As for the warning systems, tsunamis are quite rare in that part of the world compared to the Pacific - I don't even know if they ever had 'serious' ones before.

Two hours after the earthquake, at ten in the morning, would people in the beach/holiday communities have been evacuated even if the countries/governments had such a warning system?
 
The international warning system was started in 1965, the year after tsunamis associated with a magnitude 9.2 temblor struck Alaska in 1964. It is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Member states include all the major Pacific rim nations in North America, Asia and South America, was well as the Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand. It also includes France, which has sovereignty over some Pacific islands, and Russia.

However, India and Sri Lanka are not members. “That’s because tsunamis are much less frequent in the Indian Ocean,” McCreary said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6756409/
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Seems like any area that might be subject to an earthquake over 8 or so should be part of the system, regardless of the rarity. This is a field where science has made a big difference.

If it were possible to have even a few minutes warning, I'd rather spend my last minutes trying to escape, rather than be notified of my impending doom by the screams of drowning children on the beach.

Darkly noted, landmines in Sri Lanka have been displaced by the tsunami. It would really suck to survive the disaster only to be blown up by a mine...
 
shuize said:
True. But when a 9.0 quake hits somewhere in the ocean, we sure ought to be able to predict the resulting tsunami.
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That's exactly what I was thinking after reading a news report that the tsunami struck "without warning" 2 hours after the quake.
 
Warning

Just came back from a couple of weeks on Hawaii (the Big Island) and ended up driving completely around it on the coastal "beltway" I noticed several poles with big yellow "loudspeakers" on them and suspected they were tsunami warning horns. Sure enough, they are. I wonder if these went off. Anyone here resident in Hawaii?

I doubt they could have done much with two hour warnings but surely people living on boats in harbors could have taken effective measures.

kuroyume0161, I agree in principle, but the most effective long-term solution would be to reduce the population of the earth by several billion, not to fret these types of natural disasters. But that just ain't gonna happen - at least not in a planned way.
 
zultr said:
That's exactly what I was thinking after reading a news report that the tsunami struck "without warning" 2 hours after the quake.
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I agree, after all there should be plenty of hard data on the effects of 9.0 ocean quakes 6 miles under, and how the prevailing conditions at the time will react with the ocean currents, not to mention underwater obstructions, weather patters etc. As a coast dweller, I would love to see the money put into this I'm just not all that optimistic about the results.
 
Pragmatically speaking, even if India and Sri Lanka were part of the system, the death toll would not be dramatically cut. You've got two hours to get word to a hundred or more isolated villages along the coast with no phones. Sumatra is part of the warning system, and yet it has only been able to confirm 500 dead, despite being the closest land to the epicenter of the quake and the place where the tsunami's force must've been greatest. This is because the villages along the coast (which would have suffered most) are simply not in communication with inland population centers; their own government can not even estimate casualties yet.

IIRC, tsunami warnings are not issued after every earthquake; they are issued when ocean bouys detect tsunamis. An 8.1 earthquake occurred under the ocean this past Thursday about 260 miles west of New Zealand; it was strong enough to be felt in Australia, New Zealand, and surrounding islands, but no deadly tsunamis were reported associated with it.
 
SRW said:
I agree, after all there should be plenty of hard data on the effects of 9.0 ocean quakes 6 miles under, and how the prevailing conditions at the time will react with the ocean currents, not to mention underwater obstructions, weather patters etc. As a coast dweller, I would love to see the money put into this I'm just not all that optimistic about the results.
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I think the warning systems in the Pacific Ocean are based on measuring movements in the water or sudden changes in the depth of the water, not so much on predicting the outcome of a quake.

I have no idea about the costs involved, but again - in the Indian Ocean tsunamis are very rare, and I would guess one of this magnitude is occurring less than once a century.

Thailand is a member of the tsunami warning network, but didn't pay any attention to the Western coast since 'it doesn't happen there'.
 
Bjorn said:
I think the warning systems in the Pacific Ocean are based on measuring movements in the water or sudden changes in the depth of the water, not so much on predicting the outcome of a quake.
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Nope. Tsunami waves in deep ocean waters where they are generated are measured in centimeters in height and kilometers in length. They do not (in deep waters where warning systems must detect them) generate significant movement of water or "sudden changes in the depth of the water." Hell, even a HUGE, HUGE wind-generated wave of 40 meters is only 1/100 of the average depth of the ocean.
 
WTF is the east indies. I thought that term went out with the snuff box.

However, I should not be making jokes. Only god knows how many people have died in this. From watching the videos on the news, it is a terrifying event, and many have died, and many more will die. Sanitiation, breadwinners, parents, much has been lost. We will probably not know for months what the real toll has been.
 
We had been thinking of a holiday in Phuket. Damned scary videos. They aren't that high, but they don't just crash on the beach and roll back again, either.

you have to wonder, just how much energy goes into making a wave that can spread along a whole ocean.
 
SezMe said:
Nope. Tsunami waves in deep ocean waters where they are generated are measured in centimeters in height and kilometers in length. They do not (in deep waters where warning systems must detect them) generate significant movement of water or "sudden changes in the depth of the water." Hell, even a HUGE, HUGE wind-generated wave of 40 meters is only 1/100 of the average depth of the ocean.
Click to expand...
But that change of depth seems to be exactly what they are trying to measure:

The center gets advance warning of tsunamis from six instruments in the Pacific Ocean operated by the National Weather Service. Located at depths of 10,000 feet or more, they look for small increases in the weight of the overlying water caused by the bulge of a passing tsunami.
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If this is correct, what is 'the bulge of the passing tsunami' if not an increase in depth?

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/nation/10503891.htm
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kuroyume0161 said:
Actually, this happened early this morning (my time - MT), just before I went to bed. The early figures, 150 dead, were expected to rise dramatically by me. The toll now stands (Reuters) at over 11,300. I expect it to go over 20,000.

Ya know, with all of the stupid bickering over almost meaningless stuff that causes scandals and wars, why do we not put more effort into preparing for these catastrophes? There isn't much to be done to avert them, but we could at least, as a technological species of over 6,000,000,000 individuals, use our vast resources in more humanitarian ways to lessen the devastation of just such things. Instead we find it more appealing to feed our war machines and line a select few's pockets with prosperity.

This is just anoher reminder that we, all life on this planet, are here at the convenience and mercy of this world. Not to get too anthropomorphic, but as history has shown, there are no guarantees that the human species will not suffer a death blow at any time by any number of events over which we have no control.

We are ALL equal - as in, we are all homo sapiens. We treat each other with contempt and malice and wonder why nothing ever gets solved. If we want a better world, prepared for these events, we must put aside our idiocies and get down to a goal worthy of a sentient, technological civilization - or quickly fade into geological history and forgotten.

Robert

ETA: I can only hope that Arthur C. Clarke has not been lost. I know that he resides in Sri Lanka, so we will have to wait to see.
Click to expand...

Now that a tsunami has struck the Indian Ocean there were will probably be a clamor to invest in monitoring and warning systems costing billions. Ironically, these magnificent systems will probably go unused for years, perhaps centuries, before politicians in the future elected by voters whose memory of these tragedies has faded say 'what are these White Elephants for?' and abolish them in favor a more immediately beneficial project. The characteristic of rare events is that they are rare.

Although the geological record shows that large asteroids occasionally strike the earth and that tsunamis sometimes ravage coastal areas, the rarity of their occurrence often precludes the formation of a political consensus to sustain preparations against them. There will be momentary interest, a search for scapegoats and then a gradual return to forgetfulness.
 
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