A member of Hawaii's congressional delegation has assured this writer that his office will ask the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to release its crisis communications plan, as was requested by this web log on January 27. An agency that prides itself on its quick-response capabilties should have no trouble honoring the request in time for the February 2 U.S. Senate hearings on NOAA's response to the tsunami.
Elsewhere, independent editorial voices are asking why scientists didn't use the news media to issue a warning before the tsunami struck Sri Lanka and other south Asia nations. Orlando Marville writes today in the Barbados Daily Nation:
"...what came across as the most horrendous experience was not the devastation caused by the tsunami, but a United States scientist virtually indicating on CNN that they knew that the tsunami was coming about two hours before it struck Sri Lanka, but that they had no mechanism for contact with local authorities to warn them. This was absurd. Anyone thinking – and I am not sure that scientists think as ordinary human beings do – could have contacted CNN or someone in Government to get in touch with their Embassy there to warn local authorities. Such advance warning would have given thousands of people the opportunity to run for the hills rather than face the death that came so unexpectedly."
The Navhind Times of India comments in a January 31 editorial on the conference just concluded in Phuket, Thailand on where to locate a regional warning coordination center. The editorial concludes:
"With such warning systems set up, we could hope that a significant tsunami is detected in advance, and warning is extended to the entire Indian Ocean Basin. Full use should be made of radio and television and the communications used by Coast Guard and other authorities to disseminate warning to the people, likely to be hit by the high tidal waves. We have realized how thousands of lives could have been saved if the official agencies had the means to monitor the tsunamis and communicate an alert to the people. Let us not allow the horrible tragedy to be repeated ever again."
It's not surprising that people all over the world are asking why the mass media weren't used to issue a tsunami warning; the mass media communicate with mass audiences, so it would seem to be common sense to engage the media in issuing warnings. Noticeably silent on the media issue is NOAA, but that silence will end on February 2 when the Senate committee begins looking into the details of the agency's crisis communications plans.
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 30, 2005
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