Fifty weeks after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, it seems this web log’s message has gotten through, judging from a letter just received from NOAA public affairs chief Jordan St. John.
Responding to my posted comments on the agency’s new tsunami notification SOP, Mr. St. John says in a December 8 letter:
“This SOP was developed to accomplish dual purposes. The first and most important is to certainly assist in saving lives. You have taken the position that had a more proactive media outreach effort taken place during the Indian Ocean event, many lives could have been saved. In hindsight, that makes sense, but we also believe that until that fateful event, many in the media would not have taken the warning seriously.”
This blog also has taken the position from its inception that coordination with the news media most certainly would have to be accomplished to achieve life-saving warnings via their international networks. While I’ve criticized the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for not engaging those media proactively on December 25th (Hawaii time), in hindsight it’s because they and others at NOAA apparently had not thought ahead to consider how important pre-coordination with the media might one day be. (That's why the many "we did everything we could" comments by Center personnel in the weeks after the tsunami were so objectionable. By not reaching out to the major news media that day, they hadn't done everything they could.)
It’s safe to say they see the importance now. Mr. St. John’s letter continues: “Today, because of this tragic event, the media are much more sensitized to the danger of tsunamis, and have reacted very quickly to the information issued by both Tsunami Warning Centers. We expect these procedures to improve.”
I dare say, NOAA and the Centers are themselves much more sensitized to the danger of not having a solid media-notification SOP in place – an SOP that has been coordinated and game-planned with the major news media to ensure they know how to react when a Center believes a devastating earthquake and tsunami event has occurred somewhere in the world.
Mr. St. John notes that “the SOP is designed to remove (the media-contact) burden from Center staff and place it on our public affairs staff that is better equipped to manage the media onslaught.” That makes sense, and there are parallels throughout the business world. Power grid operators don’t talk with inquiring reporters during a blackout; the utilities’ public affairs personnel do.
The key point that must not be lost, however, is that NOAA’s public affairs personnel must be brought into the loop IMMEDIATELY after a potential tsunami is detected, and they should be empowered to IMMEDIATELY contact the major media using rehearsed channels of communications.
We’re talking minutes here – those precious minutes when media with globe-circling communications networks can transmit, broadcast or cablecast their warning messages BEFORE tsunami waves arrive.
That obviously was not pre-coordinated last December, and it’s not at all clear that this coordination has yet happened. If not, NOAA should call CNN, the Associated Press, the BBC and other candidate media to begin a dialogue leading to a truly live-saving capability.
In less than two weeks the world's media will carry one-year anniversary stories about the tsunami tragedy. This blog was created and did most of its proselytizing early in 2005, anticipating the delayed acknowledgement that now seems to have come that more could and should have been done to save lives on December 26.
We’ll keep this communications channel open next year with the hope that there will be reason to comment about a new public-private tsunami warning collaborative -- freely entered by government agencies and public-spirited media -- that will be a credit to all concerned.
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
