The hearing conducted today by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation had some positive exchanges that appeared to reveal committee support for including the media in NOAA's tsunami warning plans. Thanks to modern technology, the entire two-hour, 15-minute hearing already is archived. (The hearing actually begins at 13:36 in the archived webcast.) The prepared statements of the witnesses also are available.
The unscripted questions and answers between the committee and panel members provided some of the more illuminating exchanges. The following involved Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, Chairman; Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Ranking Member, and two witnesses; it begins at 1:12:38 in the webcast.
Senator Inouye: I have just one more question to any one of you. Within 24 hours after the disaster in Southeast Asia, major stations such as CNN and all the networks began criticizing and suggesting they should have been notified so they could used their offices and facilities to warn the people. Is that a valid criticism? Could that have been done?
John Marburger, III, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy: It certainly could have been done. I do not know what the protocol is for notifications, but the National Weather Service is notified instantly, and usually their information is shared immediately with the media.
Brigadier General John Kelly, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Deputy Undersecretary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Senator Inouye, it is my belief that many of those news organizations did in fact get the tsunami bulletin that was sent out from the from the Hagemeyer Warning Center in Hawaii. I think what they were asking for was some type of protocol be established wherein the watch officer might make a telephone call to them or somehow take an explicit step to get the information to them.
Senator Inouye: Is that a valid request?
BG Kelly: I think we have to do some analysis of it and what we are talking about. Now let's take the National Hurricane Center. When hurricanes are coming there is a large press presence in the Hurricane Center. Fortunately with hurricanes we have a bit more time to start alerting the public. With tsunamis, and while this earthquake, as Dr. (Charles) Groat said, was one of the more massive in the century, we had time to watch the tsunami perpetuate across the Pacific (sic). Frequently in Alaska and Hawaii you only have minutes, and I'm just not sure, given one watch officer on trying to issue bulletins, clarify the bulletins, that there's sufficient time frame to be talking to the press. There may be other arrangements that can be made with the press for them to get the information differently.
Senator Inouye: There was another criticism in that we did notify the countries involved, but the receiving facility was not operational. Is that a valid one?
BG Kelly: When you’re talking about the receiving, you’re talking about the receiving system in the in-country? (DKI: Yes.) As I said in my testimony, we have an agreement with 26 countries in the Pacific Rim to provide information to them, and they have the responsibility of developing their local warnings and distributing them to their country. No such system exists in the Indian Ocean, and so there is some truth in that countries were not prepared to deal with it. As I said in my testimony, tsunami preparedness has a number of variables in it. To my mind, the most important one is when you get the warning, have you got a way internally to get it out to your citizens, and have you educated them and work with them so they know what to do. Thanks to both of your help with the Tsunami Mitigation Program legislation in ’96 we’ve been able to do a fair amount of that work on the West Coast and in Hawaii.
Senator Inouye: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Stevens: Gentlemen, if necessary, Senator Inouye and I will send you a letter to each of your agencies for this request: We would ask that you report back to us in two weeks what it would take to establish a system to notify the entities that have been mentioned – specifically, 911, the Weather Channel, the emergency disaster systems that exist in the 50 states. We’re concerned primarily with this country because of our committee’s jurisdiction. I’m sure others will be asking the questions about the international aspects of the system to come. But right now, we thought we had a system, and we found when this occurred that half of it was dormant, was not working. And we think we ought to have a system that not only we’re notified if something’s gone wrong but we also have an adequate apparatus to detect a problem and get at it now!
Beyond that, though, I think the news media have a legitimate cause to object! There’s no reason why we can’t have an interconnection with 911 or with the Weather Channel or with the disaster system or FEMA. We also handle communications, gentlemen, and that can be done automatically. Once you press the button, it can be very ubiquitous and go throughout the country if it’s set up right. So we’d like to know what it would take to do that! And if you need money, the Appropriations bills are coming up. We’ll see to it you get it.
BG Kelly: Mr. Chairman, I may have misunderstood your question. I thought when you were talking about the press you were talking about internationally. We in NOAA work very very closely with the Weather Channel. We work very very closely with FEMA. We will provide the information requested. I will be surprised in fact if those organizations you talked about did not have information about this tsunami. The fact was, though, that the tsunami was not going to impact the United States and therefore some of their interest may not have been as great on it. But internationally, dealing with international press, I’m not sure what the arrangements are.
Senator Stevens: Because we’re talking here about one that might be coming our way, and our buoys are supposed to tell us that.
BG Kelly: That’s what I’m telling you. I believe a system is in place if this one would have affected the United States.
The several witnesses were forthcoming in their testimony and responded to the senators' inquiries with conviction. However, some of their comments above do reveal a lack of familiarity with operations or communications plans that call for person-to-person voice contact with news media that have a capability to disseminate warnings internationally. The plans simply may not exist, and that's what we hope to uncover with the eventual release of those planning documents.
As usual, there was a tendency in the hearing to emphasize the reliance on automatic electronic notification of the media. Perhaps it would be useful for NOAA's planners to spend some time in a high-pressure media operation, where the incoming messages by telephone, fax, e-mail, radio and other methods can be confusing and overwhelming. It isn't hard for electronic messages to be lost in the ever-present "chatter" of that environment.
Senator Steven's obvious interest in notifying 911 and the Weather Channel might well be expanded to include the major media discussed on this web log in many previous posts -- the Associated Press, CNN, BBC, Reuters, News World International, UPI and others. Each of these organizations has globe-circling communications networks already in place that could assist the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in disseminating tsunami warnings. The harried watch officer mentioned by BG Kelly certainly deserves all the training he or she needs to be able to handle the pressure of fitting life-saving telephone calls into the protocol, because a failure to communicate can lead to tragic consequences.
The hearing was a positive development and should lead to opening up a valuable dialogue between NOAA, Congress and others whose goal is to save lives through the issuance of effective tsunami warnings.
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 2, 2005
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