Third Anniversary Show Offers Nothing New as PBS Recycles Remembrance of 2004 Tsunami; Were No Lessons Learned in Past Three Years?

NOTE TO VISITORS: Thank you for dropping by the Tsunami Lessons blog.  The underlying premise of this blog is this: Had a protocol been in place at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center -- painstakingly implemented and coordinated with the world's major globe-circling media in the quiet time before the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004 -- one telephone call after the earthquake could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives around the Indian Ocean.  

Our most recent post here at Tsunami Lessons (below) was at the third anniversary of the Christmas 2004 tsunami, and we've not been updating this site due to the absence of a compelling reason to do so. We said what needed saying in the three years immediately after the event, and you're encouraged to read our posts from the beginning -- especially those in early 2005. 

However, the release on December 21, 2012 of "The Impossible" -- a film on the 2004 tragedy -- is reason enough to begin promoting the above premise. The emergence of Twitter and other social media will give this blog new opportunities to proselytize on the importance of building the world's major media into emergency notifications to the world's population.

We like to think our recommendations here on the Tsunami Lessons blog to improve media-based tsunami warnings have been heeded, but we're not so sure. The third-anniversary post was a downbeat take on the retelling of the TV documentary that keeps showing up, with no new information about lessons learned on how tens of thousands of lives might have been saved. Please do read this blog, especially if you have responsibility for tsunami warnings anywhere in the world. Some of you still need convincing. 

2012 UPDATE: The Tsunami Lessons blog, written by Carlson Communications, received a Gold Award (Humanitarian) in the HERMES Creative Awards 2012 competition.

Here's our Third Anniversary post, written on December 27, 2007:

Barely three months after the Indian Ocean tsunami killed hundreds of thousands in December 2004, Public Broadcasting System’s NOVA program aired the documentary “The Wave That Shook the World” on Tuesday, March 29, 2005.

To mark the second anniversary of the tragedy, NOVA aired the same program on Tuesday, December 19, 2006. This week, NOVA’s choice for a remembrance of the third anniversary on Tuesday, December 25 was – you guessed it – the very same documentary.

Approximately two years and nine months have passed since “The Wave” was first broadcast. One might have reasonably expected new insights and new lessons learned to have emerged in that time to merit a fresh look at the mindsets and operational systems that failed to prevent tens of thousands of deaths in the first hours after the quake.

It’s a futile hope. “The Wave” program highlights the same attitudes and beliefs that were formed in the first three months after the tragedy. How could it not? It’s the same program. Nothing new is offered in these repeats, and one might conclude that the producers and scientists interviewed in the show have an interest in hammering home their “we did everything we could” litany – even though it’s obvious they didn’t do the one thing that could have saved lives.

Ignoring the Media Connection

That many of those deaths were preventable is not in doubt. This blog chose to remember the second anniversary a year ago with an exhaustive review of “The Wave” program’s transcript, focusing on the collective “blind spot” shared by the program’s participants on how they might respond to a major quake in the region. Here’s how we headlined that post:

Two Years after Quake, Rationalization Still
Primary Way to Deal with the Terrible Truth:
Nothing Scientists Did that Day Saved Lives

What would have saved lives was the activation of links to globe-circling news media – the central point of this blog since its inception on January 2, 2005. It’s the argument we’ve made repeatedly over the past three years, and a thorough reading of our posts going back to the beginning will show that others share this view.

But those links were not in place in December 2004. The “terrible truth” in our headline is that scientists and the public affairs personnel within NOAA had no game plan to activate if a magnitude 8+ earthquake struck the Indian Ocean region.

What Did They Know…and When?

Just seconds from the end of “The Wave” and almost as an afterthought, the documentary includes this quote by one of the scientists interviewed for the program:

“In retrospect, the scientific community should have been aware that these massive earthquakes do occur off Sumatra, and probably a little more emphasis should have been focused on the Indian Ocean, where it's documented that massive earthquakes occur.”

Precisely. Within a week of this blog’s inception, research for this blog found a report on the proceedings of the Nineteenth Session of the International Coordinating Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific in Wellington, New Zealand, September 29-October 2, 2003. As we reported on January 8, 2005, four NOAA officials, including the director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu, attended this conference.

Page 30 of the report states: 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.

Continuing, page 48 says: "...the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis."

And the Point Is…..?

Knowing what they should have known about the potential for destructive tsunamis in the region, what did the PTWC and NOAA do to create a warning system that might actually save lives? Nothing has emerged in the past three years to suggest they did anything. Need proof? Here’s the quote of a PTWC scientist about two-thirds through “The Wave” as seen in 2005, 2006 and 2007:

"No contact points, no organization, no warning systems that I know of, in the area. Picking up the phone and thumbing through the phone book or thumbing through the Web is useless. In fact, it can be dangerous because you're not concentrating on warning someone who can actually do something for the people. So we're brainstorming basically, 'Who can we call?'"

A Chicago Tribune reporter put it this way:

“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.”

What They Could Have Done

They could have activated a link to the major media – the very same media networks that for generations have efficiently moved news around the world wirelessly in seconds. They could have but didn’t because they had made no plans to do so.

And as far as we can tell, they still haven’t. Millions have been spent on high-tech solutions – new buoys, new computers, new this and new that. There are new SOPs for connecting with media in the United States, but we’ve seen no evidence of new procedures to use the news media to reach people in the tsunami-prone regions where hundreds of thousands died three years ago.

Anyone interested in reading more about all of this can start with last year’s second anniversary post and continue with our first post on January 2, 2005 and subsequent entries.

If a producer of “The Wave That Shook the World” happens to be reading this, please relegate your 2005/6/7 editions of the program to the history shelf. A fresh look at this tragedy is long past due.

We already know the terrible truth of 2004. Next time, we hope you’ll have found reasons to report on new initiatives that will use 21st century communications to warn unsuspecting people of their peril from the next big wave with the potential to shake the world.

Report Says Women More Vulnerable in Crises

We've not posted to Tsunami Lessons for more than four months -- in part because we believe the Seinfeld script excerpt post in June does such a good job in explaining one aspect of the tsunami warning problem.

But it's time to move on, and we do so today by noting a report at the OneWorld South Asia website and an article headlined Disaster Lessons from the past. Here are a few sentences:

When natural disasters occur, poor people, and specifically poor women are usually the hardest hit. It is estimated that in the 2004 tsunami three times as many women as men died. One of the reasons why more women perish is their decreased mobility since they often have not only themselves to take care of, but also children and the elderly. Due to socially constructed roles, most have never learned how to swim.

Continuing:

The medium through which information is passed is vitally relevant. A study found that women farmers in South Africa preferred seasonal climate forecast information to be relayed by extension workers or through schools rather than the radio, which was the preferred medium of men. Men have greater access as well as more time to listen to radios.

This article is thought-provoking and raises numerous issues about how to communicate life-saving information equitably among all segments of populations that are endangered by natural disasters. Contact information is available on the OneWorld site for those who wish to follow up.

Anybody Can Monitor Earthquakes and Tsunamis; The Trick Is Telling the Public What You Know

JERRY SEINFELD: I don't understand, I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation?
RENTAL CAR AGENT: Yes, we do. Unfortunately we ran out of cars.
JERRY: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
RENTAL CAR AGENT: I know why we have reservations.
JERRY: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation, and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

Who would have thought a 16-year-old Seinfeld script would be relevant to today’s tsunami-related news, but there it is – a workable metaphor about tsunami detection and warning. First, the news:

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Tsunami experts, state representatives and National Guard members toured the tsunami warning center in Jakarta today, which has transformed over the past two years into a state-of-the-art, 24-hour facility.

The December 2004 tsunami rocked Indonesia, killing more than 120,000 residents and spurring a concerted effort to concentrate on tsunami preparedness. Countries around the world pledged their support, while Hawai'i experts also offered up their knowledge.

Hawai'i has one of the most sophisticated tsunami warning systems in the world.

Charles McCreery, director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, said he has had a host of discussions with Indonesians since 2004 to get their country tsunami-ready. He said the tsunami center in Jakarta is now well on its way to becoming a world-class facility. Still, he added, "Indonesia has a big challenge in front of it."

That’s a challenge Hawaii’s PTWC arguably has yet to overcome, as we’ve suggested here for more than two years. The Center reportedly does an excellent job of monitoring earthquakes – the “taking reservations” part – but it’s with the “holding/warning” follow-up that the Center fails to do its most important job.

It’s darkly ironic that the PTWC is Indonesia’s source of professionalism in the creation of its own tsunami warning center. Even though the Hawaii Center’s personnel suspected a tsunami had been generated in December 2004, they didn’t do anything with that knowledge to save Indonesian lives. (See numerous posts since January 2005 for additional comment.)

They “took the reservation” but they didn’t “hold the reservation.” They kept the information they knew about the Indonesian earthquake so close to their collective vests that they didn’t successfully communicate what they knew to populations in peril throughout the Indian Ocean region.

Let’s hope McCreery and his fellow U.S. experts have conveyed to their Indonesian counterparts the importance of effective public communications. It’s one thing to install millions of dollars of earthquake-detecting equipment in Jakarta; it’s quite another to implement a quick-reaction warning system using local media to alert the public to a suspected tsunami.

Unless there’s a way to warn the public, all that equipment is a waste.
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Click here to visit CHORE -- Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies -- for occasional posts on the status and adequacy of emergency communications in Hawaii.

Rename the PTWC To Be Accurate; Call It the ‘United States Tsunami Warning Center’

(This is a "two-blog" post; it’s also found today at our sister blog, CHORE – Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies.)

Yet another tsunami has killed Pacific islanders, but at least America was well informed about the status of the threat. “The system worked,” said a Hawaii Civil Defense official in praise of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center’s network of buoys and seismographs.

Can it truly be said “the system worked” when people die? Are we so concerned about our own safety that we applaud a system that was incapable of warning unsuspecting islanders that they were in imminent danger of losing their lives?

Wanted: A Vision

How appropriate to quote Solomon in Proverbs as we look for lessons in the Solomon Islands tsunami:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

What might the vision be for a tsunami warning network that actually saves lives? The current version demonstrably doesn’t do that. More than 230,000 people died in the December 2004 tsunami; at least 30 died in the Solomons, and the toll is rising.

Clearly, the way the network is put together doesn’t work if “work” is defined as being a life-saver. So let’s give the vision thing a try.

Start with a goal: An effective tsunami warning network will be structured and operated in such a way that lives will not be lost – even in a locally generated tsunami.

Apply that goal to all high-threat islands, countries and territories in the Pacific where we know with certainty killer tsunamis are generated. Analyze the existing warning capabilities – sirens, radio stations, networks. Test their reaction time.

Does the System Work?

Analyze the test results. What worked and what didn’t? Is there any possible way the existing system can warn people that a locally generated tsunami may kill them?

If not, change the system!

Argue, debate and harangue local authorities until they agree to relinquish their control of the system; holding on isn’t worth the potential loss of their citizens’ lives.

Work with the United Nations. Establish funding for system enhancements. Install a fast-alert capability that sounds sirens and scrambles radio station personnel within minutes when a threat is recognized. Set a threshold that seems reasonable – perhaps a magnitude 7.5 quake in a region that historically experiences tsunamis.

Whatever you do, NOAA, do something! The current system is not working for Pacific Islanders – so don’t call it a Pacific Tsunami Warning system.

Be honest and rename the center in Hawaii to reflect its true function. Call it the United States Tsunami Warning Center. That’s what it does well – alerts and warns the states and territories of the United States.

But don’t pretend to be a Pacific-wide life-saving tsunami warning system. Your current vision isn’t big or bold enough.

Information Still Sparse on Solomon Tsunami; Were Media Used for Time-Sensitive Warning?

News reports are short on details about the timing of the tsunami that followed the magnitude 8 earthquake in the Solomon Islands yesterday.

HONIARA, Solomon Islands (AP) -- Tsunami waves churned by an undersea earthquake crashed ashore in the Solomon Islands on Monday, wiping away entire villages and triggering alerts from Australia to Hawaii, officials said. At least 13 people were killed, and the prime minister warned that the toll would likely grow. In the South Pacific nation's west, where the devastation appeared centered, there were reports of people being swept away as waves plowed up to a half-mile inland. The magnitude-8 quake that created the tsunami was followed by more than two dozen aftershocks, including at least four of magnitude-6 or stronger.

The tsunami presumably came so quickly -- one report says only 5 minutes after the quake -- that islanders had little time to escape the waves. The questions that interest us here at Tsunami Lessons are these:

• When did islanders receive media reports – i.e., radio broadcasts – about the quake’s severity and the likelihood of a tsunami?

• Which radio outlets – local or international – carried reports of the quake, and when?

It’s one thing to issue warnings and alerts via electronic means, including email, and it’s another thing altogether to issue warnings that result in lives saved. This has been our consistent message since the onset of this blog on January 2, 2005 following the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami one week earlier.

Unless a warning can be effectively communicated by electronic news media to populations in peril, the warning has accomplishing virtually nothing.

We’ll be looking for reports from the region to learn more about the sequence of events. Here’s one of the early versions of what happened taken from an Associated Press report:

“There wasn’t any warning – the warning was the earth tremors,” Alex Lokopio, the premier of the Solomon’s Western Province, told New Zealand’s National Radio. “It shook us very, very strongly and we were frightened, and all of a sudden the sea was rising up.”

It's possible no broadcast message could have reached the island in time to warn the residents, but we don’t yet know for sure. We need to know when the first tsunami alert/warning went out from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and when they were recycled into the first warning broadcasts. What did radio stations in the Solomons do with the warning they presumably received?

All we have to go on is this assessment: “There wasn’t any warning….”

Tsunami Awareness Month Begins with No Jokes; New PTWC Technology Touted as Enhancement

"One goal of the improved instruments is to avoid having too many warnings, which erodes confidence in the system, McCreery said. 'The gap is really trying to keep the public prepared to do the right thing when the situation occurs.'"

That paragraph is the final one in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin story today on new instruments installed at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The irony should be obvious to anyone familiar with the complete absence of a useful warning after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. (New visitors to Tsunami Lessons might want to start reading on this subject at our first post on January 2, 2005, "No Tsunami Warning -- Why?")

Tomorrow's second part of this two-part series is titled "Getting the public to respond to tsunamis" -- potentially another irony-laden angle in light of the 2004 tsunami warning failure.

Our observations are long overdue here on improvements made in NOAA's standard operating procedures to disseminate tsunami warnings using the news media -- the #1 subject we've flogged for the past two years. Enough has been written about these improvements in the past few months to conclude that NOAA has indeed restructured its early-warning procedures to engage the news media earlier than ever.

For now, we'll wait for more news during Tsunami Awareness Month to see how the PTWC actually will use its new technology to accomplish its mission -- which is to warn.

“Live from the PTWC”: Warning Center Goes Media Mainstream During Tsunami Watch

Wait a minute. Is this the same Pacific Tsunami Warning Center that is “not allowed” to use the media’s international news dissemination networks to issue urgent, time-sensitive tsunami warnings? (See two years of posts here if you want details of how that could work.)

Yes, this is definitely the same PTWC – the same building with the same personalities. But talk about a flip-flop.

Even as a tsunami watch was in effect and Center staffers were assessing the potential for an actual tsunami to arrive after the 8.2 Kuril Islands earthquake last night, at least two Honolulu TV stations were sending “live” reports to its viewers by reporters standing just a few feet away from the computers. Today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin carries a photo taken last night inside the Center.

The message was clear: The PTWC was on the job, ready to tell the world USING CONSUMER-ACCESSIBLE NEWS MEDIA whether a tsunami had been generated.

Emphasis was added to the previous sentence to hammer home the point: PTWC officials now use garden-variety news media to inform the public, something they failed to do in December 2004 when hundreds of thousands died in the Indian Ocean region.

This blog takes some satisfaction at the PTWC’s turnabout; maybe two years of criticism about its hands-off media policy is doing some good, but it’s hard not to be cynical about the new accessibility, which seems designed to maximize the Center’s public relations.

As we asked here nearly two years ago, “…if the media can be used to transmit PTWC’s story all over the world, shouldn’t they have a role in transmitting tsunami warnings, too? Can it be, as suggested by the Center's director last week (see March 26 posts), that the PTWC is prohibited from engaging the media more energetically?”

Cynicism aside, engaging the media for PR spin may actually help NOAA, the NWS and the PTWC appreciate how the international media can be used to quickly transmit messages to their clientele and the public.

Call it PR with a positive purpose.

Blog's 2nd Anniversary Notes PTWC "Rethinking"

The Tsunami Lessons blog was launched two years ago today with a question: "No Tsunami Warning -- Why?" Whether it has influenced improved distribution of tsunami warnings using the major news media is still highly doubtful. We've seen little sympathy to the views expressed here for the past two years.

Nevertheless, there's hope for new ways of thinking. Today's Honolulu Advertiser carries a story that highlights the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's "rethinking" of how it will trigger tsunami warnings within the Hawaiian Islands.

Our sister blog, Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies (CHORE), notes today that the rethinking is encouraging because it shows Center officials can change. As we say at CHORE today, "One would think a quarter million or more deaths in the region would have triggered a major pragmatic rethinking of how the Center distributes its warnings to populations in peril."

We hope a year from now we'll be able to report with confidence that warning procedures have indeed improved and that low-tech media networks will play a significant role in those new procedures.