East Indies Devastated By Quake, Tsunamis

rikzilla said:
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.
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Which, IMHO, is why they shouldn't bother to invest in them at all - at least not 'warning systems costing billions'.

India and Sri Lanka could spend 'billions of dollars' in ways that would save thousand times more lives than a warning system for the tsunami which will be predicted to kill 8,000 in sixty years or so.

The characteristic of rare events is that they are rare.
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:p
 
Bjorn said:
But that change of depth seems to be exactly what they are trying to measure:

If this is correct, what is 'the bulge of the passing tsunami' if not an increase in depth?
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Note I said "sudden changes in the depth of the water." with an added emphasis this time on "sudden". Yes, they look for an increase in water depth, but integrate over time to knock out wind wave activity. To me, "sudden" implies seconds (or less) whereas tsunami waves rise in minutes. Maybe that is where the misunderstanding comes in.
 
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.
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It is not the quake that generates a tsunami wave as much as it is the associated displacement of large chunks of sea floor by slumping and underwater landslides. Simply looking at quake magnitude can only provide warnings of the potential for a tsunami.
 
:eek: I'm going to Thailand in February next year, and I had planned to go snorkeling in Phuket.
 
Even a broadcast that the earthquake would likely cause a tidal surge might have been effective. I read somewhere that if those on the beach walked for 15 minutes away from the shore they would have been relatively safe. Sure, not much could be done in 2 hours, but they could have broadcast it on the radio. Many of the affected places were tourist resorts that likely had access for some form of communications equipment. Would it have made a substantial impact, especially among the poorest districts? Probably not. But reports hold that many of the dead were found in bathing suits. I'm getting very tired of watching dead infants being dragged from the mud, so I think some effort would have been better than none.
 
Bjorn said:
Which, IMHO, is why they shouldn't bother to invest in them at all - at least not 'warning systems costing billions'.

India and Sri Lanka could spend 'billions of dollars' in ways that would save thousand times more lives than a warning system for the tsunami which will be predicted to kill 8,000 in sixty years or so.

:p
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I heard a represantitive from the Pacific Tsunami monotoring organisation (I think) out of Hawaii. He said a couple of interesting things.

First, the reason they didn't issue a warning was because they detected the quake, but their was no threat to anywaywhere within thier jurisdiction.

But also he claimed that a quake of 8.9 would not normally be expected to lead to a tsunami of this magnitude. Its size caught them by surprise. [edited: as per fishbob]

Secondly, he seemed to think that some simple education would be a more cost effecitve way of saving lives. Only minutes are needed to move to safer ground - even at walking pace. If people see the tide recede rapidly, just get up high as quickly as possible.
 
rikzilla said:
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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Rick, plagiarism is not allowed here.
 
zultr said:
Even a broadcast that the earthquake would likely cause a tidal surge might have been effective. I read somewhere that if those on the beach walked for 15 minutes away from the shore they would have been relatively safe. Sure, not much could be done in 2 hours, but they could have broadcast it on the radio. Many of the affected places were tourist resorts that likely had access for some form of communications equipment. Would it have made a substantial impact, especially among the poorest districts? Probably not. But reports hold that many of the dead were found in bathing suits. I'm getting very tired of watching dead infants being dragged from the mud, so I think some effort would have been better than none.
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Pareto rule, only 20% effort, (that is, nothing like billions), would save 80%.
 
SezMe and FishBob have correctly pointed out the physics of tsunamis. Not every large earthquake produces them. They normally result when the quake triggers large movements of earth and sediments under the sea. And the waves travel across the ocean as very long wavelength and very low amplitude waves which are hard to detect against larger wind driven waves. Only when they approach the coast and the water depth is less than some fraction (I can't remeber exactly) of the wavelength do they pile up into tall destructive waves. Nevertheless there are bouy systems that can detect them in place along paths they have been known to travel in the past. Unfortunately, because they are rare in the Indian Ocean there were no detection systems in place there.

A warning systems could have saved many lives and they are relatively inexpensive, so hopefully the systems will be more widely deployed in the future. But no warning system could prevent the billions in economic damage and serious health threats people face in the aftermath...
 
Y'all want to get nervous??

http://www.cdnn.info/article/tsunami/tsunami.html

I've read predictions about this volcano&slump to be 1000' waves breaking on parts of US east coast. Note that no prior high-magnitude earthquake would be neccesary, or even sufficient, for this one, nor for massive turbidite slumps elsewhere into deep water, nor for a major asteroid deep-water impact.

Yeech!
 
More than 59,000. Lots of people are missing. It's going to go way higher...
 
patnray said:
SezMe and FishBob have correctly pointed out the physics of tsunamis. Not every large earthquake produces them. They normally result when the quake triggers large movements of earth and sediments under the sea. And the waves travel across the ocean as very long wavelength and very low amplitude waves which are hard to detect against larger wind driven waves. Only when they approach the coast and the water depth is less than some fraction (I can't remeber exactly) of the wavelength do they pile up into tall destructive waves. Nevertheless there are bouy systems that can detect them in place along paths they have been known to travel in the past. Unfortunately, because they are rare in the Indian Ocean there were no detection systems in place there.

A warning systems could have saved many lives and they are relatively inexpensive, so hopefully the systems will be more widely deployed in the future. But no warning system could prevent the billions in economic damage and serious health threats people face in the aftermath...
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Would it be possible to detect an imminent tsunami from space? I was wondering if, rather than a buoy system, they could use satellites to watch for such occurances. The advantage would be that such a satellite could be multipurpose, and thus not necessarily be considered a "white elephant" in the future, if it happened to include keeping an eye on the oceans among its tasks.
 
Kenya

The country seems to have been the only one affected by the earthquake that was able to react before disaster struck, an extraordinary fact given the reputation for inefficiency that most public services have here.

Although time played a crucial factor – television pictures were already showing some of the devastation in Asia by the time the first tsunami struck – an efficient evacuation programme stopped the casualties from mounting.

"Our marine specialists were monitoring satellite images from the Indian ocean so we knew we were likely to feel the after-effects," said a spokesman for the Kenyan navy. "We were then able to co-ordinate with the police, and the ports and harbours."

An emergency centre, mobilised in the past for oil spills and ferry disasters, was quickly manned and radio messages were sent out to commercial fishing vessels and ships off the coast.

"Our first priority was to get all boats out at sea into port," said Capt Twalib Hamisi, the ports authority's chief of operations.

"Many of the smaller fishing boats don't have radios but we were able to get a word-of-mouth chain going both north and south."

The main concern for officials was not so much from tsunamis, which were much less powerful than those that battered Asian coastlines, but from abnormal currents that would have sucked swimmers and boats out to sea.

Nonetheless, 9ft waves did crash over beaches, destroying properties and boats. Hippopotamuses in inland rivers were dragged five miles out to sea.

The police force was also mobilised, clearing more than 10,000 people off public beaches on Boxing Day, the busiest day of the year when Kenyans from around the country flock to the coast.

Many, fortified by alcohol and fuelled by scepticism, refused to leave until they were cajoled by riot police.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...29.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/29/ixnewstop.html
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bad warning policies

i am in south east asia. i had heard about the earthquake only through some website i visit for conspiracy theories ... *before* the tsunamis had hit. i rushed downstairs to check my father-in-law's satellite television. we searched every malaysian, indonesian, arabic and indian television station. *nothing* at all was mentioned. it was still game shows, soap operas, talk shows and infomercials. we found a house that got CNN and BBC before we started hearing about the earthquake. it was reported as an 8.5 by then, (but indonesia downplayed it to a 6.4). it shouldn't take too much logic to figure out that a tsunami was on its way. it would have been only half an hour before phuket was hit ... but still nothing. the best i can figure is that they were afraid of upsetting their sponsors by interrupting the programming or even putting a scroller on the bottom of the screen to warn people.

indonesia is very active with earthquakes and tsunamis, but they have no warning system. they do have loudspeakers everywhere -- for the mosques. it wouldn't be that hard to set up an alert system, like the one in hawaii. now the situation is really bad and a lot of the government corruption over here is preventing food and supplies from getting to aceh province, (some gets there, but it turns into riots and looting).
 
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