As Senate Hearing Nears, Other Voices Urge Use of News Media To Issue Tsunami Warnings

A member of Hawaii's congressional delegation has assured this writer that his office will ask the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to release its crisis communications plan, as was requested by this web log on January 27. An agency that prides itself on its quick-response capabilties should have no trouble honoring the request in time for the February 2 U.S. Senate hearings on NOAA's response to the tsunami.

Elsewhere, independent editorial voices are asking why scientists didn't use the news media to issue a warning before the tsunami struck Sri Lanka and other south Asia nations. Orlando Marville writes today in the Barbados Daily Nation:

"...what came across as the most horrendous experience was not the devastation caused by the tsunami, but a United States scientist virtually indicating on CNN that they knew that the tsunami was coming about two hours before it struck Sri Lanka, but that they had no mechanism for contact with local authorities to warn them. This was absurd. Anyone thinking – and I am not sure that scientists think as ordinary human beings do – could have contacted CNN or someone in Government to get in touch with their Embassy there to warn local authorities. Such advance warning would have given thousands of people the opportunity to run for the hills rather than face the death that came so unexpectedly."

The Navhind Times of India comments in a January 31 editorial on the conference just concluded in Phuket, Thailand on where to locate a regional warning coordination center. The editorial concludes:

"With such warning systems set up, we could hope that a significant tsunami is detected in advance, and warning is extended to the entire Indian Ocean Basin. Full use should be made of radio and television and the communications used by Coast Guard and other authorities to disseminate warning to the people, likely to be hit by the high tidal waves. We have realized how thousands of lives could have been saved if the official agencies had the means to monitor the tsunamis and communicate an alert to the people. Let us not allow the horrible tragedy to be repeated ever again."

It's not surprising that people all over the world are asking why the mass media weren't used to issue a tsunami warning; the mass media communicate with mass audiences, so it would seem to be common sense to engage the media in issuing warnings. Noticeably silent on the media issue is NOAA, but that silence will end on February 2 when the Senate committee begins looking into the details of the agency's crisis communications plans.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 30, 2005

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center Is Asked for Details of its Crisis Communications Plan

(The following letter was sent today electronically and by regular postal service to Dr. Charles McCreery and Dr. Laura Kong, directors respectively of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and the International Tsunami Information Center.)

References: Letter to the Editor, The Honolulu Advertiser, December 30, 2004; “Gathering Place” Commentary, The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 20, 2005; TsunamiLessons.blogspot.com, since January 2, 2005

Dear Dr. McCreery and Dr. Kong:

You may be aware from recent media coverage of my view that the news media could and should have been contacted to facilitate a warning to south Asia nations once the existence of a tsunami was suspected by Pacific Tsunami Warning Center personnel on Christmas Day, HST. I first made this view known in a letter to The Honolulu Advertiser on December 30, 2004 and have developed the theme on a web log since January 2. The referenced commentary in The Honolulu Star-Bulletin further expanded on my belief that pre-crisis coordination with international news media may have spared an untold number of lives around the Indian Ocean.

The intent of my continuing inquiry is to save lives in future tsunamis by supporting efforts to engage all possible emergency communications channels to issue tsunami warnings. I have a particular orientation toward so-called “low-tech” radio and television, having worked in and with those media as a journalist and later as a crisis communicator.

I therefore am writing to request a copy of your agencies’ crisis communications plans. I am particularly interested to learn the details of PTWC and ITIC protocols for direct person-to-person contact with the major international news media when its becomes clear a tsunami warning should be disseminated – not only within the Pacific Rim but outside it, as well.

Any information you can provide regarding your agencies’ ongoing coordination with the major international news media (Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, BBC, etc.) to facilitate emergency communications to threatened areas of the world would be pertinent to my inquiry. I also would like to know whether plans have been written or changed to take advantage of lessons learned from the Indian Ocean tragedy.

As you know, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has scheduled a hearing for February 2 on legislation to improve the nation’s tsunami warning system. It undoubtedly would be useful to the committee if you were to make your crisis communications plans available to me and directly to the committee before that date.

Due to the tight time frame, I would welcome your electronic response sent to my e-mail address above. I apologize for grouping you together in a single letter, but it seemed to be the most expeditious way to write to you both. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and attention to my request.

Sincerely,

/signature/
Doug Carlson

cc: Senator Daniel K. Inouye
Senator Daniel K. Akaka
Representative Neil Abercrombie
Representative Ed Case

Hearing Set for Tsunami Warning Bill; Questions for Admiral Lautenbacher

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation today announced that a hearing will be held on February 2 on legislation to improve tsunami warnings.

Scheduled to appear is NOAA Administrator Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., U.S. Navy (Ret.). In light of Admiral Lautenbacher's strong defence of The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's (PTWC) response to the Sumatra earthquake (see January 12 post), the committee might well ask him this previously-suggested list of questions:

• Will NOAA release the PTWC’s crisis communications plan? (If not, why not?)
• What liaison did NOAA accomplish with the major media (Associated Press, CNN, BBC, etc.) before 12/26 to ensure emergency phone calls to these media would produce timely warnings to their audiences?
• Are PTWC scientists trained to telephone the media to issue life-saving warnings?
• Is the PTWC too high-tech oriented? Do you think low-tech telephone calls have a place in your pre-crisis planning and emergency warning protocols?
• Have you ordered changes in the PTWC warning protocols since the tsunami? If so, what changes have your required?
• Is NOAA prepared to accept any responsibility for an internal procedural failure that might have cost the lives of tens of thousands of people in south Asia?
• What is NOAA telling south Asia nations about its performance on 12/26?
• What are your personal feelings about NOAA’s performance on 12/26?

These are legitimate issues that would get to the heart of whether NOAA is capable of issuing radio and television warnings once its scientists believe a deadly tsunami may have been generated anywhere on the planet. The February 2 hearing ought not to gloss over NOAA's performance on 12/26 and its state of preparedness today.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 25, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

Senators Sponsor Warning System Upgrade; Attention also Needed on Media Protocols

Long-time U.S. Senate colleagues Dan Inouye of Hawaii and Ted Stevens of Alaska have joined with others to introduce The Tsunami Preparedness Act (S.50) to "modernize the nation's tsunami warning and mitigation capabilities", according to a press release issued by the Senate Commerce Committee today.

“The appalling scope of the Indian Ocean tragedy illustrates the importance and necessity of our work of the past ten years, and with stark clarity, we can see that despite our best efforts, much remains to be done,” said Inouye. “Now, as before, Senator Stevens and I have come together to lead the charge toward national and international tsunami preparedness.”

The Act's summary includes encouraging references to so-called low-tech communications methods as advocated by this web log: "This (NOAA research) program shall investigate, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and the Federal Communications Commission, the potential for improved communications systems for tsunami and other hazard warnings, including telephones, wireless and satellite technology, the Internet, television and radio, and any innovative combination of these technologies."

The senators are encouraged to immediately require NOAA to disclose its current planning to issue warnings over TV and radio after earthquakes that may trigger tsunamis. By its own admission, NOAA did not alert news organizations with global reach after the Sumatra earthquake and before the tsunami struck some Indian Ocean countries. This web log believes lives were lost because of the apparent absence of communications planning to issue alerts through existing technology, including broadcast and cable television and radio.

There's no reason to wait for these plans to be disclosed, and if they haven't even yet been written, Congress would do well to require NOAA's immediate compliance.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 24, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

Memo to U.N. Tsunami Warning Planners: Think Outside Your Traditional High-Tech Box

Bickering, indecision, disputed priorities – they’re all emerging at the UN-sponsored conference under way on this date in Kobe, Japan on creating a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean.

While attendees agree something must be done, they seem to be focused exclusively on building their multi-million-dollar technology-driven system. That may be the right solution for the long term, but it can't meet the needs of the present.

None of the news stories on the conference I’ve yet seen even mention the necessity to include usable media notification to warn of approaching tsunamis in the absence of high-tech systems that have yet to be built.

The view driving this web log was summarized once again in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on January 2o in a commentary with suggestions to change NOAA’s warning protocols by including immediate proactive person-to-person media contacts. (BTW, if NOAA has media notification in its crisis communications plan, it hasn't surfaced in any of the reporting since the tsunami, and this writer has received no responses to the contacts he made with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.)

These media protocols shouldn’t be limited to NOAA. They're universally relevant. But what's with this massive blind spot about using the media for such alerts? Are scientists as a group the world over so dependent on “science” and “technology” that they can’t bring themselves to “stoop” to the level of the mass media to alert mass populations?

A high-tech warning system will take years to implement. U.N. dignitaries should immediately ask their governments' agencies whether they're prepared to disseminate potentially life-saving tsunami warnings on low-tech radio. Could they do it tomorrow? They obviously couldn't on December 26.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 21, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

Seeing Through NOAA's Blind Spot: What Business Can Learn from the Tsunami Response

The Indian Ocean tsunami may become a case study in university communications classes one day, much as the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Tylenol poisonings are today. But this web log is about learning communications lessons in the here and now; the next tsunami in an area on the globe unprotected by a high-tech warning system could strike at any time.

What can we learn from NOAA’s response to the earthquake and resulting tsunami? By now the world knows that despite suspicions at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center that a tsunami had been generated, scientists there failed to issue a usable warning to the Indian Ocean region.

This web log believes they failed because, by NOAA’s own admission, the Center doesn’t maintain a list of media contacts. By inference, there’s no media plan to issue warnings to mass populations using the mass media. (See earlier posts – especially January 8 – for development of this theme.)

Despite the failure to save any lives on December 26, NOAA’s chief has lauded the Center’s performance as “excellent”. It’s safe to say that NOAA has a collective “blind spot” about what a truly “excellent” life-saving response would have been that day.

There’s much for business to learn from NOAA’s response – and also from how NOAA is dealing with the post-tsunami criticism it’s receiving:

Lesson #1 – Don’t be defensive; be open to input that sounds like criticism. It takes courage to accept criticism of your organization without immediately rejecting the critical assessments of its performance. NOAA appears to be in “spin cycle” as of this writing. It may be human to defend your organization’s performance, but listening is a better way to learn than talking.

Lesson #2 – Evaluate with an open mind what you’re hearing from both inside and outside the organization. Almost every major unplanned event can and should result in modifications to the crisis response plan. Shutting out the negative comments won’t lead to positive change. Your harshest critics may just know what they’re talking about.

Lesson #3 – Make sure you build efficiency into your crisis response. The Warning Center’s response was far from efficient; once scientists there suspected a tsunami, they made telephone calls to individual offices and colleagues in south Asia – i.e., one phone call communicated with one person. If a mass media response had been written into NOAA’s crisis communication plan, one phone call to the Associated Press or CNN could have been leveraged to produce a warning to millions of people before the tsunami arrived on the beaches of some Indian Ocean countries.

NOAA should modify its procedures immediately so its personnel can engage in life-saving efforts – not futile ones – when the next killer tsunami strikes.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 16, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

What Do We Make of NOAA's "Job Well Done" Self-Assessment?

How should we regard the performance of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center after the devastating Sumatra earthquake?

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin thinks the Center performed admirably (January 13 editorial, “Hawaii’s tsunami warning center performed its job”) and defended it from criticism in Thailand and elsewhere for not sounding a usable tsunami warning to south Asia.

Maybe the Center did perform its job and mission well, but that depends on what the definition of “its job” is. The scientists certainly were efficient and immediately left their families on Christmas Day to gather at the Center, analyze the initial data on the earthquake and dispatch a bulletin within minutes to the 26 Pacific Rim member countries of the tsunami warning system.

And they sent another bulletin about an hour later to those same countries, accurately predicting there would be no Pacific-wide tsunami but suggesting that perhaps one had been triggered in the Indian Ocean.

At that point, suspecting that a tsunami was racing across the ocean, they started making telephone calls to government agencies in the region, with no success. Scientists have given many interviews to the media about what it was like in those moments when the suspicion of a probable tsunami finally had sunk in. The Chicago Tribune reported:

“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.”

In the end, the terrible truth about the Center’s performance on Christmas Day is that not one life was saved in south Asia by what the Center’s scientists knew and what they did.

That hardly describes a great performance – unless, of course, the Center’s “job” is narrowly defined as administrative. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Conrad Lautenbacher seems to prefer that interpretation.

In a press conference on January 11, Lautenbacher said the staff’s actions were “excellent” and faithful to the warning procedures in place.

“This is a group that believes in saving lives and protecting property at all costs,” he said.

But the Center did not save any lives on Christmas Day. It did not protect any property. What are we to make of this disconnect between what the Center’s staff suspected – that a killer tsunami might have been generated – and the fact that more than 160,000 people died around the Indian Ocean rim?

Questions arose following the tragedy about why no effective warning was raised beyond the Pacific Rim. Rob Hail asked in a January 2 letter to the Star-Bulletin: “Why in the world didn’t the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center have a plan to notify the appropriate international media….?” Having just returned from southeast Asia, Hail noted that CNN, BBC and other services are popular news sources in many areas hit by the tsunami.

Confirmation that the Center and its sister NOAA agencies apparently have no media communications plan came a few days later in a UPI story that quoted NOAA spokesperson Dolores Clark:

“Following the realization that a massive tsunami had been generated, they (the Center’s scientists) 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 offices.”

Then Clark dropped a bombshell: “Not only was the Center focused on warning agencies, it does not have an official list of media contacts.”

So there it was -- no media contacts, no media phone numbers and therefore no media planning by a U.S. agency that prides itself as being the world leader in tsunami preparedness.

What’s more, there apparently has been no thought given by the Center and the International Tsunami Information Center, both located in Hawaii, as to what they could do to save lives in the absence of a high-tech warning system in the Indian Ocean. They knew there was no such system, they knew tsunamis are a threat to the region and they knew a major quake one day might trigger a massive tsunami there.

Yet when all those known factors finally came together, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was reduced to wondering how to send an effective warning to south Asia. It doesn’t seem right for Lautenbacher to be back-patting now.

What can NOAA do? I posted a five-point program on this web log on January 12 as a suggestion on how NOAA can shift its thinking and culture to include meaningful media notification after future earthquakes that may have generated tsunamis. The process starts with facing up to the Christmas Day failure to save lives:

1. NOAA will accept constructive criticism -- rather than deny -- that actions it could have undertaken on December 25 (HST) likely would have saved lives in south Asia.
2. NOAA will resolve to change its communications culture, to include reevaluating the scope of its information-disseminating mission -- i.e., whether its mission extends beyond the Pacific Rim.
3. NOAA will rewrite it communications protocols to include early telephone calls to news organizations that have the capability of sending worldwide tsunami warnings.
4. NOAA will accomplish high-level coordination with the management of these news agencies to ensure proper execution of the alerts when received by the media.
5. NOAA will train its personnel to respond to suspected tsunamis by making direct person-to-person contact with the major news outlets based on proper prior planning.

NOAA owes it to the victims and their families to learn the lessons of the Sumatra earthquake and tsunami. Businesses routinely search for lessons after being hit by major non-scheduled events. NOAA must do the same.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 14, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

Am I Qualified To Write this Stuff?

There's been a spate of newspaper articles recently on "blog ethics" suggesting bloggers might well abide by a code of standards. I've not lined up with any such code but will volunteer my bona fides to comment on crisis communications.

I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in journalism from Iowa and Northwestern respectively. After five years in the Army in the late '60s, I worked with Westinghouse Broadcasting Company all-news radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, at The Chicago Daily News on its copy desk and as a reporter for The Honolulu Advertiser and KGMB-T V in Honolulu. My crisis communications background includes nearly nine years as communications manager and spokesman for Hawaiian Electric Company during hurricanes and other island-wide power emergencies. I've been consulting with client companies since 1990 and on my own as a sole proprietor since 1993. See my web site below (click "Why Us?") for more background.

Yes, I do believe I'm qualified to suggest changes in NOAA's crisis communications protocols and will continue to monitor this issue up to and beyond the congressional hearings into NOAA's response to the earthquake and tsunami.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 13, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

Leading NOAA to Water: A Proposal To Improve Its Crisis Communications Response

NOAA needs encouragement to accept that whatever it may say about executing its mission well and making heroic attempts to send a tsunami warning to the Indian Ocean region, nothing its agencies did in the first two hours after detecting the Sumatra earthquake saved a single human life.

This is an unfortunate but undeniable truth, and perhaps if NOAA can face it without feeling the need to make excuses, new ways of disseminating earthquake and tsunami information can be implemented.

This five-point proposal to NOAA was distributed as a press release to the Honolulu news media today and will be transmitted to the NOAA and Pacific Tsunami Warning Center leadership:
1. NOAA will accept constructive criticism -- rather than deny -- that actions it could have undertaken on December 25 (HST) likely would have saved lives in south Asia.
2. NOAA will resolve to change its communications culture, to include reevaluating the scope of its information-disseminating mission -- i.e., whether its mission extends beyond the Pacific Rim.
3. NOAA will rewrite it communications protocols to include early telephone calls to news organizations that have the capability of sending worldwide tsunami warnings.
4. NOAA will accomplish high-level coordination with the management of these news agencies to ensure proper execution of the alerts when received by the media.
5. NOAA will train its personnel to respond to suspected tsunamis by making direct person-to-person contact with the major news outlets based on proper prior planning.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 12, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

NOAA's Administrator Has Spoken, Denies Agency Could Have Done More To Warn South Asia

NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher Jr. held his press conference in Honolulu yesterday and predictably circled the wagons around the Pacific Tsunami Warning center.

Lautenbacher congratulated the Center for its post-earthquake performance and sidestepped criticism the Center didn't do enough to warn Indian Ocean nations. He asserted the Center's mission is confined to issuing alerts to Pacific Rim countries.

Lautenbacher repeated NOAA's ongoing commentary that south Asia nations weren't preapred to receive an effective tsunami warning even after scientists suspected one had been generated. "It takes two people to make a warning work. You have to have a receptive audience on the other end," he said. "What we do is provide the front end. We broadcast it and the other side has to be set up to receive it. If they're not set up to receive it or do not have people on station to do that, then obviously the warning will not work."

It's as if the retired admiral has never heard of "the power of radio." This blog's author noted that the Center did not transmit the alert to and through the major news media when it first suspected a tsunami -- more than an hour before it ripped into Sri Lanka and India. "They did not do everything they could and should have. They had a responsibility as the world's leading authority on tsunami information and warning to do more. If the message doesn't get through, the sender has failed."

It's clear NOAA is not inclined to accept criticism being directed at it from sources around the world. Therefore, a better tactic may be to suggest a program to improve NOAA's communications protocols, as will be done shortly in another post to this site.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 12, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

Questions the Media Should Ask NOAA Administrator Lautenbacher During His Hawaii Visit Today

The Honolulu Advertiser reports this morning that NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher Jr. will tour the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, HI today.

Since the Center is right here in their back yard, here's hoping the Honolulu media finally start asking questions about the Center's performance following its detection of the December 26 earthquake.

A Lautenbacher press conference has been scheduled for 3 p.m. HST today; according to a NOAA press release, the focus would appear to be "...the importance of having an international early warning system in place for tsunamis and other severe weather events and climate phenomenon that affect global communities."

That's well and good, but again, the emphasis seems to be on high-tech issues and solutions. Here are some questions -- helpfully faxed to the Honolulu news media -- that need asking at the press conference about the PTWC's crisis communications protocols and its ability to issue effective warnings without spending a dime on anything but long-distance telephone calls to the media:

• Will NOAA release the PTWC’s crisis communications plan? (If not, why not?)
• What liaison did NOAA accomplish with the major media (Associated Press, CNN, BBC, etc.) before 12/26 to ensure emergency phone calls to these media would produce timely warnings to their audiences?
• Are PTWC scientists trained to telephone the media to issue life-saving warnings?
• Is the PTWC too high-tech oriented? Do you think low-tech telephone calls have a place in your pre-crisis planning and emergency warning protocols?
• Have you ordered changes in the PTWC warning protocols since the tsunami?
• Does NOAA accept responsibility for an internal procedural failure that might have cost the lives of tens of thousands of people in south Asia?
• What is NOAA telling south Asia nations about its performance on 12/26?
• What are your personal feelings about NOAA’s performance on 12/26?

Perhaps we'll have some answers later today.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 11, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

The Victims Ask: "Why didn't we receive warning? At least five minutes would have helped."

It's one thing for critics to probe why no effective warning was given to the nations of south Asia before the December 26 tsunami struck. Now the victims are asking the question for which no satisfactory answer has yet been offered. From a woman in Sri Lanka who lost her father, sister and niece:

"Why didn't we receive warning? We had two hours after Indonesian quake and at least five minutes warning would have helped. Five minutes would have saved my father's life."

(As reported by correspondent Philip Reeves today for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered")

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 10, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

NOAA Must Now Coordinate with the News Media To Make Future Tsunami Warnings Possible

Thanks go to MSNBC's Will Femia for mentioning this web log in his on-line blog column on January 7. Femia also linked other web logs that question why no media alerts were issued after the Sumatra earthquake. George Murray of Graz, Austria subsequently sent word that as early as December 27 he was concerned about the absence of a tsunami warning via the media. He included correspondence he's had with the BBC.

Femia writes that he has a hard time imagining the major media reacting to a call from a scientist by immediately sending out an urgent tsunami warning to their clients. The response, of course, is that all necessary coordination with the media must be done in quiet times, not in the middle of a crisis. As a former journalist, I'm convinced senior policymakers at the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, BBC and other agencies would have responded positively to NOAA's request to have emergency contact procedures in place.

As for Femia's skepticism that people in south Asia would have been monitoring the media as the tsunami approached, he might ask a few Americans where they get their news while traveling abroad. It's often in the kind of beachside hotels, restaurants and bars that were destroyed on December 26. As George Murray wrote to the BBC: "Is it unreasonable to think that some of the tourists in their hotels and/or hotel staff might have seen and perhaps heeded these warnings? Don't you have thousands of listeners in the affected countries?"

If it isn't happening already, NOAA must now launch an investigation into all of its agencies' activites once the Sumatra earthquake was detected. Plans must be made to issue potentially life-saving warnings to the media -- verbal warnings exchanged between people in addition to those sent to computers and fax machines. The news media must respond to these requests for cooperation by recognizing they can play a critical role in saving thousands of lives.

George Murray also reminded the BBC of Edmund Burke's observation: "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." Maintaining a list of media contacts to call may seem like a little thing compared to multi-million-dollar high-tech detection systems, but it's a necessary thing.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 9, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

The Truth Is Out: NOAA Couldn't Issue a Tsunami Warning to the News Media Because It Didn't Have Their Phone Numbers

The question this web log has been asking for six days finally has been answered by an official U.S. government source.

As incredible as it seems, NOAA and its subordinate agencies could not call the news media to warn Indian Ocean nations of the onrushing killer tsunami because they didn't even have a list of media telephone numbers.

By inference, that means NOAA's crisis communications plans don't include low-tech telephone calls to mass media organizations when a warning must reach a mass audience.

Confirmation of earlier suspicions came from a NOAA spokesperson as reported by UPI Pentagon correspondent Pamela Hess and posted on the Washington Times' site:

"The watch standers first learned of the tsunami through the media almost four hours after the earthquake. Following the realization that a massive tsunami had been generated, they did the best job they could to contact authorities," said Dolores Clark, a spokeswoman for NOAA. "But they were fixed on reaching agencies that have responsibilities for warning such as weather offices or disaster management offices."

"Not only was the center focused on warning agencies, it does not have an official list of media contacts," Clark said.

"Unfortunately, there was no system set up to accomplish this because the (Pacific Tsunami Warning Center) serves Pacific Ocean countries," she said.

So there it is. No media contacts, no media phone numbers and therefore no media planning by a U.S. agency that prides itself as being the world leader in tsunami preparedness. At least two NOAA agencies -- the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and the International Tsunami Information Center -- knew there was no high-tech warning system in the Indian Ocean. They knew tsunamis are a threat to the region (see what they must have known below). They knew a major quake one day might trigger a massive tsunami there.

And knowing that, they did what exactly? How did they prepare to warn Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, India and other nations of a magnitude 8.0 or higher earthquake and the threat of a potential tsunami?

Maybe Senator Olympia Snowe's hearings will uncover plans that simply were not executed properly, but based on the latest revelations, NOAA's crisis communications planning appears to have been inadequate -- with catastrophic results.

What Did NOAA Scientists Know About the Threat?

Why did NOAA scientists conclude almost immediately after the earthquake that no tsunami had been generated? As experts, surely they knew (as the world has learned) that earthquakes in that region do create tsunamis.

The International Coordinating Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific held its Nineteenth Session in Wellington, New Zealand September 29-October 2, 2003. Four NOAA officials attended this conference. Page 30 of the session's report says the following about earthquakes and tsunamis in the Indian Ocean (click link for PDF file):

Due to its tectonic setting which is located at the junction of three major plates of the Pacific, Eurasian and Indo-Australian, and one minor plate of the Philippines, Indonesia has a high activity in earthquakes and tsunamis. Historical data show that many tsunamis in Indonesia are destructives (sic) and have affected neighboring countries such as Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, etc.

Page 48 of the document says: "...the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis...."

One NOAA attendee has explained NOAA's decision to not issue a warning about a potential tsunami in the first two hours following the Sumatra earthquake this way: "Our business is not to guess, so we did not guess there would be tsunamis."

My guess is that NOAA deeply regrets that remark and that a massive review of the agency's crisis communications procedures -- including media notification -- is quietly underway.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 8, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com

More Critics Are Asking: Why Weren't the News Media Called?

This web log's premise is gaining traction. For the most exhaustive examination yet found of NOAA's response to the earthquake, visit Lila Rajiva's column at the DISSIDANT VOICE web site. Using NOAA's own statements, both Rajiva and this log (January 6 post) have concluded that it would not have been unreasonable for scientists to determine immediately after the earthquake that a tsunami probably had been created based on the earthquake's location alone:

"The (NOAA) bulletins may be vague about the threat in the region, but Ken Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, California is pretty explicit. 'We knew the whole coast of Sumatra was capable of large damaging earthquakes and large tsunamis,' he says. Dr. Elizabeth Keating, current president of the Tsunami Society, also thinks the tsunamis were predictable especially since 'almost on a weekly basis for the last two months there had been seismic activity in the Indonesian area.'"

Rajiva goes on to ask almost the identical questions I raised in my December 30 letter to The Honolulu Advertiser and in the newspaper's subsequent coverage by noting:

"...even if they (NOAA) couldn't reach people, why did they use email bulletins which were unlikely to be opened immediately? Why didn't NOAA simply contact the media? A CNN bulletin or an AP news flash would have reached (sic) almost at once and gone to local radio stations fast enough to have saved lives in India and Sri Lanka for certain and probably also in Thailand. It boggles the mind that in an age of instant global communication, the combined efforts of the military, top university seismic systems and the national weather service weren't able to get through to anyone in four large Asian countries and also can't remember whom they spoke to."

The failure to send an alert straight to the news media will continue to be the focus of this web log. It's an issue that demands examination by Senator Olympia Snowe's hearings on NOAA's response to the Sumatra earthquake.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 7, 2005

Finally -- Others Agree

The media have begun to notice what this web log has been saying for the past five days -- that not enough was done by U.S. scientists to send low-tech (telephone) messages to the major news media with global networks in time to save lives before the tsunami struck several Indian Ocean nations.

In a post dated 1/7/05 on its web site, The Guardian (UK) carries a report headlined:
US island base given warning; Bulletins sent to Diego Garcia 'could have saved lives'
The story contains the comments of Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa's Department of Economics:

"Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Ottawa University said the argument put forward by other experts that countries hit by the tsunami could not have been warned of the approaching waves because they had no sensors or special buoys in the Indian Ocean was a 'red herring'. Prof Chossudovsky, who helps run the centre for research on globalisation, added: 'We are not dealing with information based on ocean sensors. The emergency warning (sent to U.S. forces at Diego Garcia) was transmitted in the immediate wake of the earthquake based on seismic data.' With modern communications, 'the information of an impending disaster could have been sent round the world in a matter of minutes, by email, by telephone, by fax, not to mention by satellite television', he said."

Elsewhere, web posts continue to report on the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) response to criticism its agencies did not do enough to effectively warn Indian Ocean nations, as Professor Chossudovsky and this web log suggest. A post at GovEXEC.com quotes NOAA's web site and timeline as saying, "NOAA officials tried to get the message out to other nations not a part of its Pacific warning system to alert them to the possibility of a tsunami." Referring to NOAA's statement, the site says scientists "were attuned to the danger, but blind to it without a way to detect it."

Perhaps not sufficiently attuned on Christmas Day, HST. Although it took nearly three and one-half hours for the quake's true magnitude to be calculated (by Harvard University's Seismology Department), the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and other montoring sites presumably knew shortly after the quake struck that its epicenter was in a subduction zone -- an area where one of the earth's plates is pushing its way beneath another. These zones are notorious for tsunami generation.

Nevertheless, knowledge of a subduction zone epicenter wasn't sufficient to immediately suggest the potential for a tsunami to U.S. scientists. The timeline says it took another hour for that possibility to sink in. Phone calls started going out to colleagues and agencies in the region, but there still is no evidence that scientists attempted to reach out through the news media to communicate their fears.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 5, 2005

David Broder on Hearings & Need for Warning

Perennially perceptive Washington Post columnist David Broder focuses his column today ("A Long-Term Gift: Enough Warning") on the need to avert tragedies with warning systems that can save untold numbers of lives.

Broder highlights how governments are investigating a high-tech system to alert ocean-bordering nations when tsunamis are generated by earthquakes. He notes Senator Olympia Snowe's criticism of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for failing to issue an effective warning to south Asia based on information that was available before the tsunami struck the region.

As noted in each post on this web log, a warning might well have been issued by U.S. agencies and scientists if they had immediately notified the major news media once they suspected a tsunami instead of making one-on-one telephone calls to colleagues in the region.

Retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad Lautenbacher, head of NOAA, and John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, both told Broder that the lack of an integrated warning system in the Indian Ocean contributed to the lack of an effective warning. When the earthquake off the coast of Indonesia was detected, Broder writes, no one knew who needed to be called. "That was embarrassing," Marburger said.

It also was deadly. No senior government official has yet to address whether a low-tech warning -- telephone calls to the media -- was activated by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center or other government agencies. Senator Snowe has announced her intention to conduct hearings on NOAA's performance following the earthquake.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 6, 2005

Suspended for Failure To Warn

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

Someone DID Call the Media -- in Kenya

If you've read previous posts to this web log, you know that its focus is the failure of U.S. scientists to issue an effective warning to Indian Ocean populations in the first two hours after the Sumatra earthquake. The log's premise is that scientists could have used the major news media -- e.g., the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN -- to alert the region in time to perhaps save many many lives.

A January 2 post contains a link to a NOAA timeline showing that within 70 minutes of the quake scientists suspected a tsunami had been generated, but instead of notifying the media, they spent all their time unsuccessully trying to reach colleagues and government agencies in south Asia.

As noted in yesterday's post, scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii were "trying to telephone government officials they did not know and did not know how to reach." No article yet found has mentioned that anyone contacted the news media to issue a tsunami warning -- no article save one.

Perhaps the most compelling report yet found about actions immediately after the quake was written by Andrew C. Revkin of The New York Times; it was published here and on numerous other sites. Although this 5200-word article reports on interviews with scientists and government officials from Seattle, WA to Africa, the only mention of anyone attempting to contact the news media to spread the alarm comes from Mombassa, Kenya:

"The emergency plan was intended for things like oil spills or fires, not tsunamis. But it was all they had. The police were informed to evacuate the beaches. The news media were called to spread the word. The local authorities were mobilized up and down the coast. Radio messages were sent to commercial fishing vessels and ships. For the wooden dhows that are so common in Kenya and that lack radio communication, the looming danger was spread by word of mouth."

"The news media were called to spread the word." Unfortunately, well over 100,000 people had died by the time that apparently sole media call was made.

This web log will continue to search for evidence that U.S. scientists and officials used the media to warn of a possible tsunami. Knowing what's in their crisis communication plan would shed some light. The goal, of course, is to ensure that agency personnel include mass media notification in their emergency plans as the most effective way to communicate with mass populations.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 4, 2005

What's in the Communications Plan?

The frantic efforts of U.S. scientists to alert the Indian Ocean region in the minutes following the December 26 tsunami have been described by journalists all over the world. By focusing on these fruitless efforts, however, the journalists are missing a key issue:

U.S. officials might have been able to warn the mass populations of the region in time to save thousands of lives if they had alerted the major news media, such as the Associated Press and CNN, about the onrushing tsunami.

Here is the lead paragraph of a typical story on this subject; it was written by James Janega of the Chicago Tribune and published on December 28 by numerous newspapers that subscribe to the Tribune's news service:

"Chicago -- 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."

As noted in earlier posts and confirmed by a NOAA timeline, the tsunami had yet to reach Sri Lanka and India when scientists first suspected a tsunami had been generated. Rather than contact the mass media, however, scientists worked the phones unsuccessfully as they tried to reach colleagues and counterparts in the region.

One of Janega's sources said: "We didn't have a contact in place where you could just pick up the phone.... We were starting from scratch."

This quote quite reasonably suggests questions about the crisis communications planning of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) and the U.S. Geological Survey. Picking up the phone to call the news media is standard operating procedure for corporations that must communicate timely information to the public; utility companies do it routinely.

A New York Times story by reporters Michele Kayal and Matthew L. Wald that was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune on December 29 quoted a PTWC official: "We wanted to try to do something, but without a plan in place then, it was not an effective way to issue a warning, or to have it acted upon."

Does the PTWC's communications plan provide for making calls to the news media when scientists determine there is a significant threat to human life -- inside the Pacific Basin or out? It's a question that must be asked as inquiries are conducted into how U.S. agencies initially responded to the worst natural diaster of this generation.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 3, 2005

Senator Snowe Calls for Warning Inquiry

As reported in The Honolulu Advertiser on 12/31/04:

*****
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who heads the U.S. Senate subcommittee overseeing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has called for Congressional hearings on the failure (to issue an adequate tsunami warning), and on finding ways to ensure that the technological capabilities of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center are made available to the Indian Ocean, according to the Boston Globe.

The head of NOAA said his agency did all it was responsible for doing in warning 26 countries in the Pacific.

"We cannot watch tsunamis in the Indian Ocean," said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, the Commerce Department's undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere and a retired Navy vice admiral, noting that no warning system exists for all 11 countries where the death toll has now topped 117,000.

Lautenbacher said he had ordered an internal review of its response to the quake and tsunamis. He said he also has asked NOAA staff to look at creating a "rapid reaction" emergency team and a more global warning system.
*****

This internal review might well examine whether it is appropriate to expand the mission of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center beyond its traditional Pacific Rim responsibilities. I.E., if the Center's staff believes a significant tsunami may have been generated in any ocean of the world (based on calculations of the earthquake's magnitude and other factors), should not the Center take aggressive measures -- including using the mass media -- to alert nations bordering that ocean? This would seem to be a reasonable and humanitarian response; unfortunately, it didn't happen after the December 26 earthquake in the Indian Ocean.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 2, 2005

Typical Media Report on Lack of Warning

National Public Radio correspondent Christopher Joyce's report for "Morning Edition" on December 28 is typical of the reporting in the days immediately after the tsunami regarding the professed inability of scientists to issue a warning to the Indian Ocean nations. At one point in his report Joyce said:

"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 scientific 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."

This latter statement in particular leads to questions about the preparation of scientists to rapidly handle the dissemination of tsunami alerts to populations in peril. The Associated Press, CNN, News World International, Reuters and the BBC are some of the news agencies with world-wide networks. They might have been the scientists' link to the mass populations they worried about around the Indian Ocean. One has to assume that the AP, once convinced of the bona fides of a caller from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center or the U.S. Geological Survey, would have issued a "flash" bulletin to its clients that would have been broadcast on TV and radio -- perhaps in time to save tens of thousands of lives. Yet missing from all news reports found to date is any indication that U.S. scientists made an aggressive move to call the media and tell them what they knew at the moment they became alarmed that a tsunami had been generated. As noted in the NOAA timeline, U.S. agencies had knowledge of the possibility of a tsunami before the waves struck Sri Lanka and India.

(Another report by NPR's Joyce, broadcast in the December 30 edition of "All Things Considered", also reveals the tendency of U.S. scientists to focus on high-tech warning systems and apparently not think at all about using relatively low-tech media: "There is a severe frustration on our part," says one official. "We did everything we could. You just have to realize that, you know, these other links are absolutely just as critical, and we have them in the U.S. You know, they don't exist elsewhere."

This subject needs investigation -- not to lay blame but to ensure that U.S. agencies are suitably prepared with both the mindset and the means to alleviate tragedies around the world when they have the ability to do so.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 2, 2005

No Tsunami Warning -- Why?

One week after the Indian Ocean tsunami, the death toll is approaching 150,000. A significant percentage of these people perished at least two hours after the triggering earthquake. It took at least two hours for the ocean seismic waves to reach Sri Lanka, India and other countries after the earthquake near Sumatra, Indonesia -- long enough, some say, for a warning to have been sent to the region. Could the victims in these distant countries have been warned early enough to save their lives? That is the question that prompts creation of this blog.

Media reports in the first few days following the quake cited the absence of an early-warning system of sensors in the Indian Ocean as the reason an adequate warning was not given to the countries’ populations. This condition has been contrasted to the warning system that connects all Pacific Rim nations with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Honolulu, HI.

Scientists and officials at this and other U.S. agencies were quoted in numerous media stories as having said they did everything they could to alert colleagues and governments around the Indian Ocean once they suspected that a tsunami had been generated.

As noted in my letter to The Honolulu Advertiser published on December 30, however, what’s missing in all these newspaper, radio and television reports is any indication that scientists ever initiated contact with the American mass media at any time following the earthquake. The question this blog will examine in the weeks ahead is whether early notification of the media might have saved tens of thousands of lives around the Indian Ocean rim and whether the PTWC and other U.S. agencies are prepared to use aggressive outside-the-box thinking to avert human devastation on the scale recorded on December 26.

Did U.S. scientists have the mindset – once they suspected the quake had triggered a tsunami – to make a low-tech warning phone call to the Associated Press, CNN, and other news organization with global networks, or were they so conditioned to high-tech e-mails and web postings that they missed the opportunity to use the mass media to warn mass populations of the Indian Ocean countries? Since several additional hours passed before the tsunami crashed into the African coast, were lives lost there and elsewhere because the mass media were not notified?

The Honolulu Advertiser followed up on this question in part on December 31 with a story headlined “World lacks global alert for disaster”. A tsunami timeline provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that accompanied that story noted that officials at the PTWC initially calculated the magnitude of the Sumatra earthquake at 6.6 and issued a bulletin to the Hawaii Civil Defense agencies 16 minutes after the quake noting that “there is no tsunami threat to Hawaii”. No mention was made in that bulletin of a potential tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

That assessment changed in the next 45 minutes, however, and a bulletin issued 65 minutes after the earthquake revised the magnitude up to 8.5 and advised recipients of the possibility of a tsunami near the quake’s epicenter (see official timeline).

The timeline next notes that 1 hour and 31 minutes after the quake the PTWC unsuccessfully attempted to contact the Australia Met Service but did reach Australia Emergency Management. The timeline’s next entry comes at 2 hours and 31 minutes after the quake and says: “Internet newswire reports of casualties in Sri Lanka provided PTWC with the first indications of the existence of a destructive tsunami. Indications are that the tsunami had already struck the entire area by this time, although we have not been able to obtain arrival times.” Fifteen minutes later, PTWC contacted the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii – some 2 hours and 46 minutes after the quake.

This timeline and the PTWC’s reactions noted in it are critical to the assessment of whether calls to American mass media outlets might have saved lives – presuming of course that the Associated Press would have reacted swiftly and issued a Flash bulletin to its clients. According to published reports in various media, the tsunami did not strike Sri Lanka, India and Somalia until two, three and nearly six hours respectively after the earthquake.


Official inquiries will be made into how it was possible, as asked in the December 31st Honolulu Advertiser story, that "in the age of wireless communications, the Internet and 24-hour news, a catastrophic wall of water was able to cross an ocean and devastate a dozen nations' coastlines without notice." This blog will stay focused on that question and do what it can to help ensure that U.S. agencies in a position to issue life-saving warnings do so in the most efficient and media-aware ways possible.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 2, 2005