This web log has been idle since January 2, 2006, the one-year anniversary of its start-up. Our post that day said much seemed to have been accomplished in 2005 to raise our tsunami watchers' awareness at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) of ways to improve the transmission of alerts to populations endangered by an approaching tsunami.
Our hope was that the new protocols enacted by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would reflect some outside-the-box thinking in how those alerts are proactively disseminated.
Why crank this blog up again today? Because the story in today's Honolulu Advertiser on the new operating protocols at the PTWC reveals that the staff still is not empowered to pick up the telephone and call the news media in a tsunami crisis.
Visitors to this blog can click on virtually any post in 2005 to find our theme -- that the failure of the PTWC to contact the major news media on December 25, 2004 (HST) with a tsunami alert contributed to many needless deaths in the Indian Ocean region. The record is clear that no such effort was made.
Why contact the major media? Because they've had worldwide communications networks in place for years, decades, generations. Because one phone call to a clued-in and rehearsed international desk at the Associated Press, Reuters, BBC or CNN could have conveyed life-saving messages on their networks and to their outlets in the imperiled region.
Here's the key paragraph from today's Advertiser story:
"It (the PTWC) also has e-mail systems in place to alert people of potential Indian Ocean tsunamis. To make sure people are seeing the bulletins, there is a list of English-speaking offices they can telephone in the region that are operated around the clock, LeDouce said."
Doesn't this system seem more than a little sketchy? What they've put in place is a 21st Century version of the "telephone" game with an e-mail twist.
First, let's say there are 15 countries in the path of the next killer earthquake and tsunami, which naturally will strike at the least convenient time when there's only a skeleton crew at the PTWC -- in the dead of night, one staffer unexpectedly out sick, one on vacation, etc. (Think Murphy's Law.) So maybe one staff person is supposed to call these 15 countries, one after the other, to be sure they've received and actually read the warning e-mail -- in addition to the scientific analysis that must be accomplished.
And if they don't get through for whatever reason -- what then? Or even if they do, has the warning actually reached the people with a need to know? No, it's reached an office, and by reaching an office, "mission accomplished" it isn't, because the mission of a warning center is to actually warn people at risk.
Is this plan smart? Is it modern? Does it reflect creative thinking, lessons learned, common sense?
Every NOAA and PTWC official lives in a radio universe, bombarded every second of their lives by frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. It's safe to say every one of them relies on radio and television newscasts repeatedly each day. Every one of them would rather have access to radio and television bulletins about an approaching tornado or hurricane than sit by a telephone hoping for a call from Civil Defense.
It seems incredible that after all the discussion, critiques and after-action reports, NOAA and the PTWC still don't get it. They still refuse to acknowledge the potential for a telephone call to one or two major news networks to spread the word at the speed of light around the world and save lives.
Tsunami warning are meant for populations -- not offices! People rely on the broadcast and cablecast media for information, yet the media are virtually ignored as first-tier tools in the warning protocols.
On December 28, 2004, Chicago Tribune writer James Janega began his story on the tsunami warning fiasco:
"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."
Sixteen months later, we're told the big safeguard in the PTWC's warning protocols is "a list of English-speaking offices they can telephone in the region that are operated around the clock."
"Sketchy" isn't the word for it.
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
