Bickering, indecision, disputed priorities – they’re all emerging at the UN-sponsored conference under way on this date in Kobe, Japan on creating a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean.
While attendees agree something must be done, they seem to be focused exclusively on building their multi-million-dollar technology-driven system. That may be the right solution for the long term, but it can't meet the needs of the present.
None of the news stories on the conference I’ve yet seen even mention the necessity to include usable media notification to warn of approaching tsunamis in the absence of high-tech systems that have yet to be built.
The view driving this web log was summarized once again in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on January 2o in a commentary with suggestions to change NOAA’s warning protocols by including immediate proactive person-to-person media contacts. (BTW, if NOAA has media notification in its crisis communications plan, it hasn't surfaced in any of the reporting since the tsunami, and this writer has received no responses to the contacts he made with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.)
These media protocols shouldn’t be limited to NOAA. They're universally relevant. But what's with this massive blind spot about using the media for such alerts? Are scientists as a group the world over so dependent on “science” and “technology” that they can’t bring themselves to “stoop” to the level of the mass media to alert mass populations?
A high-tech warning system will take years to implement. U.N. dignitaries should immediately ask their governments' agencies whether they're prepared to disseminate potentially life-saving tsunami warnings on low-tech radio. Could they do it tomorrow? They obviously couldn't on December 26.
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 21, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com
2 comments:
I agree. The media must be a part of the plan. It seems like a no-brainer!
Thanks for you perceptive comment on my site. It seems that a regular "calling tree" , albeit on a larger scale, would be an appropriate short-term solution to this problem. Perhaps the bigest hurdle would be the establishment of an international bureaucracy - once that happened, turf wars and power struggles could tie up this for years. The media might avoid this for liability concerns, could this be done as a peer-to-peer network via Universities? The last step, the link to local authorities (the guy with the switch for the siren) might be the toughest, but a piece-meal effectiveness is better than nothing...
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