NOAA needs encouragement to accept that whatever it may say about executing its mission well and making heroic attempts to send a tsunami warning to the Indian Ocean region, nothing its agencies did in the first two hours after detecting the Sumatra earthquake saved a single human life.
This is an unfortunate but undeniable truth, and perhaps if NOAA can face it without feeling the need to make excuses, new ways of disseminating earthquake and tsunami information can be implemented.
This five-point proposal to NOAA was distributed as a press release to the Honolulu news media today and will be transmitted to the NOAA and Pacific Tsunami Warning Center leadership:
1. NOAA will accept constructive criticism -- rather than deny -- that actions it could have undertaken on December 25 (HST) likely would have saved lives in south Asia.
2. NOAA will resolve to change its communications culture, to include reevaluating the scope of its information-disseminating mission -- i.e., whether its mission extends beyond the Pacific Rim.
3. NOAA will rewrite it communications protocols to include early telephone calls to news organizations that have the capability of sending worldwide tsunami warnings.
4. NOAA will accomplish high-level coordination with the management of these news agencies to ensure proper execution of the alerts when received by the media.
5. NOAA will train its personnel to respond to suspected tsunamis by making direct person-to-person contact with the major news outlets based on proper prior planning.
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 12, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com
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