Government officials in Thailand have dealt swiftly with a forecaster for failing to issue a warning of the onrushing December 26 tsunami. As reported in The Australian, Thailand's weather bureau chief has been suspended pending an investigation.
As this web log has noted in previous posts, the article also says the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii issued a bulletin that the earthquake could have caused a local tsunami "almost an hour before the wave hit many of Thailand's western beaches...." Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is quoted: "But why weren't there any alerts? I really want to know the truth."
CNN has posted a report that describes the weather bureau chief's actions once he suspected a tsunami had been generated. Interestingly, this scientist's crisis response appears to be exactly the same as what U.S. scientists did: They attempted only to telephone government officials and agencies and apparently ignored the news media, thereby missing perhaps the best opportunity to give an adequate warning to south Asia populations.
The report quotes the chief: "'I tried to call the director-general of the meteorological office, but his phone was always busy,' he said as he described his desperate attempts to generate an alert which might have saved thousands of lives. 'I tried to phone the office, but it was a Sunday and no-one was there....'"
Are scientists not trained and conditioned to notify the mass media in a crisis? Do they only call one another to spread word of an impending disaster? Do U.S. agencies include media notification in their emergency response procedures? Did U.S. officials have time to make a life-saving call to news organizations with international reach? Did they try?
More importantly, when the next massive earthquake strikes in a location that conceivably could generate a tsunami, will they try then?
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 5, 2005
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