My visit to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center came off as planned yesterday, the three-month anniversary of the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami. Dr. Charles McCreery, PTWC director, and I talked for two hours and noted at the midpoint that the earthquake had struck at 2:59 HST. McCreery is an effective representative – and sometimes defender – of the PTWC and its procedures, but I came away thinking he is open to improving tsunami alert procedures. It may be a slow process, because some of his comments suggest the PTWC’s collective hands are tied due to policies imposed by superior organizations.
I spent a fair amount of time on the basic premise of this web log – that although PTWC scientists suspected a potentially killer tsunami, there was no mechanism in place to issue a warning directly to people in harm’s way; by extension, 300,000 people died. He made two primary points: 1) the PTWC provides advice but isn’t in a position to know what’s really happening out there in the world. “We have no magic here,” he said. They do their best to interpret, but it’s really an imprecise science when it comes to tsunamis; and 2) it’s not even the PTWC’s responsibility to be watchdog for the whole world. They have neither the resources nor the capability to alert the nations bordering the Indian Ocean. My main point, of course, is that media notification, had it been pre-coordinated, could have been the channel for a warning to the region. Another point is, if not the PTWC, who? The world looks to the building we were sitting in as the leader in tsunami warning capability. As he noted (below), the rest of the world may not be eager for a bigger U.S. role, notwithstanding the PTWC’s expertise.
What Did They Know, When Did They Know It?
McCreery flatly disputed my assertion (made yesterday and throughout the past three months on this log) that PTWC scientists called colleagues in the region before the waves struck Sri Lanka, India and points further west. I told him that was the obvious inference to be made from numerous interviews they’ve given to media all over the world, and I recalled some of the reports.
The very first story that caught my attention in this regard was in the December 29 Honolulu Advertiser; it prompted my initial letter to the editor the next day, leading a few days later to creation of this log. The reporter wrote that PTWC scientists “frantically worked the phones…trying largely in vain to warn Indian Ocean nations of the incoming tsunami disaster.” The most striking description of the scientists’ actions that I’ve found was in the lead of a Chicago Tribune story (posted on January 14): “With a killer tsunami bearing down on Sri Lanka and India at airliner speeds, an effort to save thousands of lives came down to a handful of overworked employees in Hawaii trying to telephone government officials they did not know and did not know how to reach.”
The clear implication is that they did know enough to start making phone calls, but to the wrong people, in my view. McCreery essentially said all these inferences by the media were wrong. He said he constantly is asked by reporters about this alleged “failure” to send a warning, and he says he always straightens them out.
But consider NOAA spokesperson Delores Clark’s comments reported by UPI Pentagon correspondent Pamela Hess and linked from my January 8 post: "The watch standers first learned of the tsunami through the media almost four hours after the earthquake.” (That was Clark’s quote in January and that’s McCreery’s assertion today, but according to NOAA’s timeline, scientists first mentioned the possibility of a tsunami in a bulletin 65 minutes after the earthquake and 41 minutes before the waves arrived in Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. More telling is the continuation of Clark’s statement.) “Following the realization that a massive tsunami had been generated, they did the best job they could to contact authorities. But they were fixed on reaching agencies that have responsibilities for warning such as weather offices or disaster management offices."
NPR’s Christopher Joyce’s report for “Morning Edition” on December 28 included the following: “Other U.S. scientists who monitor earthquakes say when they realized how big the quake really was there was no clear way to get the information to authorities who might have been able to warn people in time." One of his sources said on tape: "There was knowledge that a tsunami was being generated and that information was available, but the problem we ran into was that there were not appropriate agencies in places like India and in Somalia on the East and the Horn of Africa region. There was no system set up by which we could take that information and translate it into actions that the public could react to."
Over and over again scientists have been quoted in apparent exasperation at their inability to translate what they knew or suspected into a usable warning before the waves struck because no system existed to alert the Indian Ocean. I, of course, said the media represent that system and recalled another Delores Clark quote from the UPI story: “Not only was the center focused on warning agencies, it does not have an official list of media contacts.”
Continued.....
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