NOAA has been busy, I'm told, but not to worry; new guidelines are coming, new guidelines are...

It's been two months since a letter was dispatched to NOAA's public affairs chief inquiring about the agency's new and improved tsunami media-notification procedures, and still no response. This seems somewhat remarkable in light of the fact that NOAA's administrator was much speedier in his response to similar inquiries.

Nevertheless, I'm told by a NOAA public affairs spokesman that my letter hasn't simply been brushed off. "We've been extremely busy" is the explanation, and something may be coming out soon on NOAA's new procedures, which are long overdue.

This web log has said pretty much everything it needs to say about the need for new procedures. Visitors are invited to grind your way through the rationale, beginning with the first post in early January.

NOAA is invited to refresh its collective memory, too. It's all there -- especially details on the failure to have a Standard Operating Procedure in place to contact the mass media as a logical communication channel to a mass audience scattered around the Indian Ocean.

If the new and improved procedures don't include direct contact with the major international mass media, NOAA had better have a good explanation, because not only this writer but residents of the nations where thousands perished will want to hear it.