Fly in the Ointment: Tsunami Warning Centers Have No Role in Contacting the News Media

Scores of tsunami and crisis management experts gathered early this month in Paris for a conference on creating a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean region. Buried in the conference report is a description of how tsunami warnings are to be issued – a protocol that this web log believes does not improve on the ineffective warning procedures that were used on December 26.

The International Coordination Meeting for the Development of a Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System for the Indian Ocean within a Global Framework has made its report on the March 3-8 conference available here. Page 43 of the PDF document (#37 in the report itself) makes a statement about the issuance of tsunami warnings that runs 180 degrees counter to the thrust of this web log (emphasis added):

“Tsunami Warning Centres issue warnings based on scientific information, but do not provide instructions to the public for action. This is the responsibility of NDMO (each nation's National Disaster Management focal point/Organization). The NDMO must be able to interpret the warning information to provide clear, simple, and concise instructions to first responders and the affected public. Recipients of warning information include policy and decision-makers, emergency management and emergency responders, media, and the affected public….”

In other words, tsunami instructions/information for the general public must come from an agency within each country that receives the tsunami center’s warning.

Let’s leave that alone for a minute and jump to how the media are treated in this report. Page 15 of the PDF (#9 in the report) states:

“The mass media have a crucial role in assuring wide and effective warning dissemination and awareness raising. Education and training for the media is required….” (The authors must have liked that sentence so much they included it twice, one sentence after the other.)

So while the mass media are considered crucial in disseminating urgent warnings to mass audiences, the tsunami warning centers “do not provide instructions to the public for action.” Information about an approaching tsunami must come from another agency down the communications chain.

In the Indian Ocean region, that means 27 NDMOs will be critical links in that chain in transmitting tsunami information to the hundreds of millions of people living near the ocean in those countries.

There’s a Better Way

As this blog has consistently advised, the international news media should be contacted by warning centers as soon as the centers suspect a tsunami has been generated. One call to the Associated Press and/or CNN – authenticated for trustworthiness – could result in the dissemination of a tsunami warning over international electronic networks and radio broadcasts to distant populations WITHIN MINUTES!

Contrast that speed with the mish-mash of warnings that likely would emanate from 27 disparate nations around the Indian Ocean – from Australia to Yemen, with Madagascar, Mauritius and Myanmar in between.

A Visit to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center

I intend to press this point when I visit the Center on March 25 at the invitation of Dr. Charles McCreery. His graciousness in light of the criticism his Center has received from some quarters (particularly the lawsuit's attorneys) over the past three months is appreciated. I hope one outcome of our conversation will be a dialogue between the Center and the Associated Press office here on how best to transmit a warning through the AP’s globe-circling network.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
March 23, 2005