AP's New York Office Bucks the Issue to Honolulu

Here's the complete text of AP Corporate Communications representative Jack Stoke's response to my February 25 e-mail:

"We've consulted with the appropriate people here and designated our bureau chief in Hawaii to respond to your query."

I'm looking forward to hearing from bureau chief David Briscoe, who sent an e-mail suggesting I telephone him. I wrote him today as follows:

David, thanks for your note. Since the Associated Press’s New York office has designated you as the conveyor of the organization’s view on this matter, I look forward to seeing what it is.

To review the issue, many observers have remarked since immediately after the December 26 tsunami that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not attempt to communicate an urgent tsunami warning to the international news media with networks that reach into the Indian Ocean region.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s timeline of post-tsunami events suggests that had a message gone through pre-arranged and rehearsed channels to the major news media and had the media been prepared to recognize the urgency of the warning, tens of thousands of lives might have been saved.

In other words, we’re talking about whether lives were lost because there was no pre-arranged protocol or standard operating procedure that includes transmitting potentially life-saving messages to the major media, including the AP, CNN and other organizations.

The question is whether the AP sees a role for itself in mitigating future tragedies on the scale of the Indian Ocean tsunami. The AP certainly does participate in facilitating warnings when Mount St. Helens rumbles, when hurricanes bear down on Florida and when storms result in flash flooding in the Southwest, so it is inconceivable to me that improving communications channels to send tsunami warnings would be an inappropriate media role.

We are not suggesting the media should become a “partner” with the government; that would be anathema to journalists. What we do think appropriate would be conversations involving representatives of the AP, CNN, other media and NOAA on how government scientists can effectively communicate their urgent messages when they suspect a tsunami has been generated. As I said in our phone call on Friday, the fact that the AP publishes its numbers in telephone books is demonstration enough that it willingly enables newsmakers to conveniently communicate their information.

Congress is likely to endorse proactive media contact by NOAA’s agencies when it passes S.50, The Tsunami Preparedness Act (see 2/12 post on my web log, linked below), and NOAA will undoubtedly react appropriately. What I’m asking the AP to do is help close the gap – in the spirit of avoiding or reducing human casualties – by instructing NOAA on which communications channels it should use for future tsunami warnings.

Because the views you express on this issue will be the AP’s official response, a telephone conversation would seem to be too informal. I respectfully request that you convey AP’s position in writing for the record, and then we can discuss our views if you like. I’ve cc’d Kathleen Carroll on this message in an attempt to reach above the AP's Corporate Communications management level.

Aloha, Doug
--
Doug Carlson
(web log address)

BTW, a mutual recognition that we both have a good understanding of journalism ethics and practices may help our communication. Here are excerpts from my bio:

Journalism
Reported or edited for The Honolulu Advertiser; KGMB-TV in Honolulu; The Chicago Daily News and Westinghouse Broadcasting Company all-news radio stations in Philadelphia (KYW) and Los Angeles (KFWB). Earned bachelors and masters degrees in journalism from the University of Iowa and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism respectively.

Corporate Manager
Managed Hawaiian Electric Company’s communications programs and served as spokesperson 1981-1989. Responsible for media and community relations, crisis communications, internal communications, financial and customer publications, advertising and video production. Recognized by the Hawaii chapters of Toastmasters International ("Silver Gavel") and the Public Relations Society of America ("Koa Anvil for Emergency Public Relations").

News Media Call #2 Goes to the Associated Press

The Associated Press's web portal doesn't easily reveal senior management identities. Only the Broadcast Service lists executives' names and numbers, but my call there was directed to New York's international desk, which passed me on to Corporate Communications. There I was told to send my concerns to info@ap.org. Despite misgivings about using such a generic address, I'm trusting that Jack Stokes in Corporate Communications will be on it. Here's my e-mail:

Good talking with you. As noted during our call, my web log (below) has concluded that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not have usable crisis communications protocols in place (and probably still doesn’t) when the December 26 earthquake hit that would have enabled it to issue a usable tsunami warning via the AP, CNN, BBC, etc. Instead of calling the media at a high enough level to initiate a bulletin to the region, scientists are on record as having picked up their phones and called friends and colleagues in the Indian Ocean region starting about an hour before the waves reached Sri Lanka and India. A UPI story carried in the Washington Times and elsewhere on January 7 quoted a NOAA spokeswoman as saying the Center doesn't even maintain a list of media contacts. (See my blog’s January 8 post.)

I submitted testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation re S.50, The Tsunami Preparedness Act, which was offered by Sen. Daniel Inouye and Sen. Ted Stevens (see 2/1 post). I subsequently posted a suggestion to improve the bill’s existing language to specifically include “international news media networks with instantaneous transmission capabilities” in the list of communications channels NOAA would be instructed to use in future emergencies (see 2/12). (My 1/13 post has my so-called bona fides to offer these suggestions and criticisms.)

NOAA representatives have been attending conferences all over the world on establishing tsunami warning networks (Tokyo today, Paris next month). They also should make plans to meet with executives of CNN, AP and other news organizations to establish “flash-point” communications protocols. And if NOAA isn’t inclined to initiate those meetings, I would hope the major media would approach NOAA to start the necessary planning.

I look forward to staying in touch and would be pleased if my web log observations contribute to a workable crisis communications plan that involves The Associated Press. Once you read this, I’d welcome a response on which executive would be most inclined to carry the ball for the AP.

I should note here that I'm not suggesting the AP should crawl into bed with NOAA and become part of the government's news-generating apparatus. That would be objectionable to any news person, but it surely would be legitimate for the AP and other major media to discuss with NOAA how it can efficiently connect with the media when minutes matter -- as they did on December 26.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 25, 2005

News Media Call #1 Goes to CNN International

I guess frustration showed in yesterday's post, and now I'm forced to contact the media myself or eat my words.

In fairness to NOAA, the agency may be disinclined to reach out to the news media to discuss new tsunami warning protocols because of what that might imply -- recognition, perhaps, that more could have been done to warn the Indian Ocean region before the December 26 waves reached some nations.

And then there's the alleged tsunami victims' lawsuit that was announced at a Vienna, Austria press conference on February 15th. Since the initial story, which was published at numerous on-line sites, there's been no further on-line coverage about it, but the threat might be enough to squelch NOAA comment and initiative.

Therefore, as noted yesterday, it's time for individual action. My media search began at CNN's web site, which helpfully provides links to bios of anchors, correspondents and executives. Working down the alpha list of executives, it took only three hits to reach Chris Cramer, managing director of CNN International.

Assistant Danette Johnson took my call and heard me out as I outlined my premise (see heading above), and she responded with encouraging news. She said CNN and other organizations are in fact sorting out what their role is in the communications chain between NOAA agencies and distant populations. I followed up with a fairly long e-mail to her referencing my Senate testimony on S.50, The Tsunami Preparedness Act, and subsequent suggestion to improve the bill by specifically mentioning the international news media among communications channels to be used for future tsunami warnings.

Suggestion to CNN: Propose a high-level summit involving the senior leadership of CNN, the Associated Press and NOAA to agree on the need for new crisis communications protocols -- details to be hammered out later.

Tomorrow, the Associated Press.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 24, 2005

The Wait Goes On for NOAA To Acknowledge the News Media's Role in Tsunami Warnings

Help me out here. There’s only so much reading anyone can do on the web. What I want to know is:

Has anyone anywhere read anything by any NOAA spokesperson that even hints the agency believes the news media should be telephoned when a killer tsunami is thought to have been generated?

We’ve read about automatic e-mailed bulletins. We’ve read about the proposed high-tech warning system for the Indian Ocean. We’ve read about all of that, but we haven’t read anything about low-tech telephone calls to the media!

And wouldn’t you think by now someone within NOAA would have publicly acknowledged the media’s role is transmitting tsunami warnings? Or have I just missed it?

If so, please point me to the story in which a NOAA spokesperson is on record saying something like: “We have reviewed our crisis communications protocols and will ensure that proactive telephonic contact with the major news media will be used when we have reason to believe a life-threatening tsunami has been generated anywhere on the planet.”

Or would that be too low-tech for scientists? Is there something about making a telephone call to a news organization that is just too far outside the scientific method for scientists?

I can’t believe that’s the case, but I’m beginning to wonder, because it keeps not coming up.

Take yesterday’s page 1 story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: “Isle scientists work to expand tsunami alerts; Warnings about large earthquakes will be sent to Indian Ocean nations that agree to plug in”. (The headline writer got it right: the story’s focus is on electronic devices that will automatically transmit data to countries that are “plugged in” to a high-tech system.)

In a 791-word article in which a veteran journalist known for her thorough reporting quotes various NOAA and University of Hawaii scientists and spokespersons, the word “media” appears not once. New tsunami information centers are mentioned, tide gauges are mentioned and another trip by NOAA representatives to another meeting on tsunami warning and mitigation is mentioned (Paris, March 3-8), but nobody mentions the proverbial “elephant in the living room” – the fact that a telephone call to international news media might have spared many lives in the Indian Ocean region on December 26.

It’s Time to Call the Media

Since we don’t know whether NOAA has contacted the Associated Press and CNN to bring them aboard for the next tsunami alert, let’s assume it hasn’t. There’s no evidence to the contrary.

I’ll start making calls and writing letters and will report here on what happens. This will either be a humbling experience (“Who’s calling, from where and why, and I'm sorry, Mr. Big is in a meeting.”) or a productive one.

I’m counting on senior news managers and policy makers to endorse the media's obvious and traditional role in alerting distant populations to critical information – populations that could learn of tsunami warnings from cable television channels and radio broadcasts.

I'm counting on them to be the mountain that calls on NOAA if NOAA won't call on them.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 22, 2005

Japan, U.S. To Expand Tsunami Warnings; Also, What to Make of the Tsunami Victims' Lawsuit

An Associated Press story is all over the internet today reporting that Japan and the United States will issue tsunami warnings to Indian Ocean countries “as a stopgap measure” until the region develops its own alert system.

The story doesn't say how those warnings will be generated, although there's a strong suggestion the methodology will be high-tech: “Japan and the United States have the world's most advanced warning systems. Japan's network of fiber-optic sensors feeds seismic activity data to a supercomputer, which can issue a warning of a deadly tsunami within minutes of a quake.”

Eight weeks after the tsunami tragedy, it's clear NOAA must revamp its crisis communications planning to involve the major international news organizations in issuing warnings once tsunamis are suspected. Low-tech phone calls -- had they been made to the major media on December 26 -- would have been nearly as fast as instantaneous electronic bulletins, and without question they would have been more effective. This blog's February 12 post proposed an improvement to S.50, The Tsunami Preparedness Act: Engage the major international news organizations in issuing warnings. That didn't happen on December 26.

The Lawsuit

News broke earlier this week that two attorneys intend to file a lawsuit on behalf of the Indian Ocean tsunami victims. The allegation will be that the defendants -- French hotel chain Accor, the Thai government and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii -- failed to warn the victims of the approaching tsunami.

NOAA isn't commenting until the lawsuit is filed, but the action undoubtedly has the agency's attention. One of the plaintiffs' attorneys is Ed Fagan of New York, whose legal history can be found in dozens of on-line stories that describe him as flamboyant, controversial and at times spectacularly effective. Fagan takes on the big causes; he extracted $1.2 billion from Swiss banks on behalf of Holocaust victims, and his other headline-making cases have targeted apartheid, slave labor, nuclear power plant accidents, "mad cow disease" and the like.

This case could turn into a wild ride for NOAA.

Call from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center

As noted in earlier posts, an invitation to visit the Center has been anticipated since the suggestion was first made on February 3 by a NOAA representative. Dr. Charles McCreery, PTWC director, called this week and said a visit should occur in late March after he returns from another trip. We discussed the general premise of this web log; he listened and I listened during what amounted to a good conversation on how the media might be integrated differently in future tsunami warnings. It also seems likely that representatives of the Hawaii congressional delegation will be invited.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 17, 2005

Improving S.50, the Tsunami Preparedness Act

As a response to the December 26 tragedy, the Tsunami Preparedness Act (S.50) has much to recommend it and is hard not to like (access the text at thomas.loc.gov and enter the bill number). Nevertheless, the bill can be improved by specifically mentioning the role of the international news media in transmitting tsunami warnings, which it does not do in its present form.

This web log is focused on one small piece of the tsunami picture -- the critical need for NOAA and its agencies to issue useful tsunami warnings through existing media channels. The Associated Press, CNN and other international news organizations with globe-circling networks and instantaneous communications capabilities were not telephoned with urgent voice messages on December 26, even though Pacific Tsunami Warning Center scientists did call their colleagues in the Indian Ocean region about the suspected tsunami.

It's impossible to know how many lives might have been saved if an effective media warning had been issued. As NOAA's representatives testified at the February 2nd Senate hearing on S.50, populations in threatened areas need to be educated on how to react to a tsunami warning. But regardless of the readiness of local communities, effective warnings must be generated, and it is this web log's belief that existing media can be activated quickly toward that end.

Doing so will require crisis communications protocols to be in place, coordinated, rehearsed and implemented in future tsunamis. We civilians still don't know what's in NOAA's communications protocols, despite our January 27 request for a copy of its crisis communications plan (see 1/27 post). We'll undoubtedly learn much about those plans if NOAA does issue the invitation to visit the Hawaii Center, as we've been told it will (2/3 post).

How, then, can S.50 be improved? It should specifically mention the role of the international news media in transmitting tsunami warnings to areas endangered by tsunamis.

As currently written, Section 5, Tsunami Research Program, broadly addresses communications in paragraph (b), Communications Technology: The Administrator, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and the Federal Communications Commission, shall investigate the potential for improved communications systems for tsunami and other hazard warnings by incorporating into the existing network a full range of options for providing those warnings to the public, including, as appropriate--
(1) telephones, including special alert rings;
(2) wireless and satellite technology, including cellular telephones and pagers;
(3) the Internet, including e-mail;
(4) automatic alert televisions and radios;
(5) innovative and low-cost combinations of such technologies that may provide access to remote areas; and
(6) other technologies that may be developed.

I suggest renumbering this list by inserting a new subparagraph:
(5) international news media networks with instantaneous transmission capabilities;

This would be an unambiguous directive to NOAA and its agencies to think outside the high-tech box and, as subparagraph (1) suggests, pick up the telephone to get the attention of news media gatekeepers when minutes matter.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 12, 2005

Scientists Support Communications as Means to "Get the Word Out"; Invitation Still in the Works

The latest from NOAA is that the invitation mentioned in a February 3 post to visit the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center awaits confirmation on possible dates. I have asked NOAA to include representatives of Hawaii's congressional delegation in the visit, but there is no confirmation of that possibility as of yet.

In the meantime, it was encouraging to read an on-line report at the news@nature.com ("the best in science journalism") web site on a meeting of environmental scientists held in Washington, DC, last week. Headlined Environmental scientists told to 'get the word out', the story noted:

"Scientists knew about December's Indian Ocean earthquake within minutes of it happening. Yet no formal alert was sounded and the resultant tsunami killed hundreds of thousands."

According to the story, participants advocated greater openness among scientists in communicating the results of their work to the public at large. "All the technology in the world doesn't do a lot of good if you can't get the word out," said Charles Groat, director of the United States Geological Survey.

It is especially encouraging to see this quote from Dr. Groat. Two days after the tsunami a member of the U.S. Geological Survey staff was reported by National Public Radio as saying, "There was no system set up by which we could take that information and translate it into actions that the public could react to."

In light of Dr. Groat's recent comments, perhaps NOAA officials are warming to the use of the news media in issuing timely and effective tsunami warnings to affected populations.

Elsewhere in the story, Anthony Michaels, director of the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California, said the tsunami disaster highlighted the need for more communication by scientists. The story concludes:

Younger scientists are being trained in communicating science to the public and see it as a rewarding part of their job, says Michaels. "We are new to this kind of dynamic, and in some ways we are not well suited to it," he says. "The leadership at the universities and the young people are on board...and then you have all these old farts in between."

I trust I'll find none of the latter at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

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

NOAA May Issue an Invitation

As relayed in a call from a NOAA representative in Silver Springs, MD, an invitation is coming for this writer to visit the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and meet with its staff. No doubt we’ll exchange views and information not previously known to one another, and it should be a valuable experience -- at least for me.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 3, 2005

Upon Further Review: NOAA Seems Reluctant to Publicly Acknowledge Media's Critical Role

Yesterday’s enthusiasm over the Senate hearing is tempered somewhat by a careful reading of the prepared testimony presented for the committee’s record.

For example, although there've been five weeks of public comment and criticism of NOAA and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for not issuing an effective tsunami warning via the news media, the word “media” appears exactly once in the prepared testimony of NOAA Administrator Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, Jr. (U.S. Navy, Ret.). The testimony refers only to “international media” reports on the tsunami’s destruction. (Among all the witnesses, only the prepared testimony of Eileen Shea of Honolulu’s East-West Center mentioned “media” as a participant in disseminating warnings: “As we move forward, we also need to more effectively engage the media as a critical component of an effective, comprehensive risk management information system.”)

“News” shows up once, also referring to post-tsunami “news reports”. Perhaps the world’s most ubiquitous communications tool -- “radio” – appears nowhere in his testimony. It’s ironic to note that when witnesses and experts speak of “wireless” communications, they’re referring to the relatively recent technologies of cellular phones and digital communications devices. Our grandparents called radio the “wireless”.

“Television” also is a no-show even though CNN, BBC and News World International among other networks transmit news to television sets all over the planet. “Cable” refers in three places to “cabled buoys” anchored in the ocean to detect tsunamis.

In his testimony, Lautenbacher bangs away on the theme that sending a warning to the Indian Ocean isn’t NOAA’s job. Page 4 alone contains the following within the space of four paragraphs: “It is not the Center’s responsibility to issue local tsunami warnings from seismic events outside of the United States.” “NOAA Tsunami Warning Centers have no authority or responsibility to issue tsunami warnings for the Indian Ocean basin.” “As the Indian Ocean is outside the NOAA tsunami area of responsibility, NOAA Tsunami Warning Centers have no procedures in place to issue a warning for this region.”

The last statement is why this web log was created on January 2. It was apparent from media reports immediately after the tsunami that no procedures exist to issue warnings to far-flung areas of the world.

Yes, local education is critical for populations to know what to do when a warning arrives, and yes, an effective tsunami warning system requires “an established local communications infrastructure for timely and effective dissemination of the warning and evacuation requirements” (page 5). But who else besides NOAA is qualified to get the word to those “local” communicators by engaging the international news media?

“It’s not my job” may have been the Rodriguez family motto on “Chico & the Man”, but that mentality doesn't contribute to saving lives. NOAA should consider shifting from its inside-the-Pacific-Rim-box thinking and accept responsibilities that it alone apparently is capable of assuming.

That would be an inspiration to the world.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 3, 2005

Senators Appear To Support Concept of Media Involvement in Tsunami Warnings

The hearing conducted today by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation had some positive exchanges that appeared to reveal committee support for including the media in NOAA's tsunami warning plans. Thanks to modern technology, the entire two-hour, 15-minute hearing already is archived. (The hearing actually begins at 13:36 in the archived webcast.) The prepared statements of the witnesses also are available.

The unscripted questions and answers between the committee and panel members provided some of the more illuminating exchanges. The following involved Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, Chairman; Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Ranking Member, and two witnesses; it begins at 1:12:38 in the webcast.


Senator Inouye: I have just one more question to any one of you. Within 24 hours after the disaster in Southeast Asia, major stations such as CNN and all the networks began criticizing and suggesting they should have been notified so they could used their offices and facilities to warn the people. Is that a valid criticism? Could that have been done?

John Marburger, III, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy: It certainly could have been done. I do not know what the protocol is for notifications, but the National Weather Service is notified instantly, and usually their information is shared immediately with the media.

Brigadier General John Kelly, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Deputy Undersecretary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Senator Inouye, it is my belief that many of those news organizations did in fact get the tsunami bulletin that was sent out from the from the Hagemeyer Warning Center in Hawaii. I think what they were asking for was some type of protocol be established wherein the watch officer might make a telephone call to them or somehow take an explicit step to get the information to them.

Senator Inouye: Is that a valid request?

BG Kelly: I think we have to do some analysis of it and what we are talking about. Now let's take the National Hurricane Center. When hurricanes are coming there is a large press presence in the Hurricane Center. Fortunately with hurricanes we have a bit more time to start alerting the public. With tsunamis, and while this earthquake, as Dr. (Charles) Groat said, was one of the more massive in the century, we had time to watch the tsunami perpetuate across the Pacific (sic). Frequently in Alaska and Hawaii you only have minutes, and I'm just not sure, given one watch officer on trying to issue bulletins, clarify the bulletins, that there's sufficient time frame to be talking to the press. There may be other arrangements that can be made with the press for them to get the information differently.

Senator Inouye: There was another criticism in that we did notify the countries involved, but the receiving facility was not operational. Is that a valid one?

BG Kelly: When you’re talking about the receiving, you’re talking about the receiving system in the in-country? (DKI: Yes.) As I said in my testimony, we have an agreement with 26 countries in the Pacific Rim to provide information to them, and they have the responsibility of developing their local warnings and distributing them to their country. No such system exists in the Indian Ocean, and so there is some truth in that countries were not prepared to deal with it. As I said in my testimony, tsunami preparedness has a number of variables in it. To my mind, the most important one is when you get the warning, have you got a way internally to get it out to your citizens, and have you educated them and work with them so they know what to do. Thanks to both of your help with the Tsunami Mitigation Program legislation in ’96 we’ve been able to do a fair amount of that work on the West Coast and in Hawaii.

Senator Inouye: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Stevens: Gentlemen, if necessary, Senator Inouye and I will send you a letter to each of your agencies for this request: We would ask that you report back to us in two weeks what it would take to establish a system to notify the entities that have been mentioned – specifically, 911, the Weather Channel, the emergency disaster systems that exist in the 50 states. We’re concerned primarily with this country because of our committee’s jurisdiction. I’m sure others will be asking the questions about the international aspects of the system to come. But right now, we thought we had a system, and we found when this occurred that half of it was dormant, was not working. And we think we ought to have a system that not only we’re notified if something’s gone wrong but we also have an adequate apparatus to detect a problem and get at it now!

Beyond that, though, I think the news media have a legitimate cause to object! There’s no reason why we can’t have an interconnection with 911 or with the Weather Channel or with the disaster system or FEMA. We also handle communications, gentlemen, and that can be done automatically. Once you press the button, it can be very ubiquitous and go throughout the country if it’s set up right. So we’d like to know what it would take to do that! And if you need money, the Appropriations bills are coming up. We’ll see to it you get it.

BG Kelly: Mr. Chairman, I may have misunderstood your question. I thought when you were talking about the press you were talking about internationally. We in NOAA work very very closely with the Weather Channel. We work very very closely with FEMA. We will provide the information requested. I will be surprised in fact if those organizations you talked about did not have information about this tsunami. The fact was, though, that the tsunami was not going to impact the United States and therefore some of their interest may not have been as great on it. But internationally, dealing with international press, I’m not sure what the arrangements are.

Senator Stevens: Because we’re talking here about one that might be coming our way, and our buoys are supposed to tell us that.

BG Kelly: That’s what I’m telling you. I believe a system is in place if this one would have affected the United States.


The several witnesses were forthcoming in their testimony and responded to the senators' inquiries with conviction. However, some of their comments above do reveal a lack of familiarity with operations or communications plans that call for person-to-person voice contact with news media that have a capability to disseminate warnings internationally. The plans simply may not exist, and that's what we hope to uncover with the eventual release of those planning documents.

As usual, there was a tendency in the hearing to emphasize the reliance on automatic electronic notification of the media. Perhaps it would be useful for NOAA's planners to spend some time in a high-pressure media operation, where the incoming messages by telephone, fax, e-mail, radio and other methods can be confusing and overwhelming. It isn't hard for electronic messages to be lost in the ever-present "chatter" of that environment.

Senator Steven's obvious interest in notifying 911 and the Weather Channel might well be expanded to include the major media discussed on this web log in many previous posts -- the Associated Press, CNN, BBC, Reuters, News World International, UPI and others. Each of these organizations has globe-circling communications networks already in place that could assist the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in disseminating tsunami warnings. The harried watch officer mentioned by BG Kelly certainly deserves all the training he or she needs to be able to handle the pressure of fitting life-saving telephone calls into the protocol, because a failure to communicate can lead to tragic consequences.

The hearing was a positive development and should lead to opening up a valuable dialogue between NOAA, Congress and others whose goal is to save lives through the issuance of effective tsunami warnings.

Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
February 2, 2005

Testimony to U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (2/2/05)

Mr. Chairman, it is highly probable that tens of thousands of people died around the Indian Ocean rim on December 26, 2004 because an agency of the United States government was unprepared to issue an effective tsunami warning to the region’s population. This inference can be made with great certainty based on the public record and the statements of numerous federal government employees.

The warning failure occurred even though Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) scientists first suspected the existence of the tsunami as much as two-thirds of an hour before the first waves struck Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. That is clearly established in the tsunami timeline by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Ref: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2004/s2358.htm)

It’s true that scientists did not initially know that a 9.0 magnitude earthquake had struck near Indonesia. They first calculated the magnitude at 8.0, which they felt would have triggered only a localized tsunami or no tsunami at all.

Others may wish to investigate the too-low estimate of the earthquake’s strength with a goal of improving early forecasting techniques. The intent of my testimony, however, is to demonstrate that the communications protocols that existed on December 26 were inadequate to issue an effective warning and that U.S. officials may not have been sufficiently trained or sensitized to the importance of calling on the news media for assistance.

We know from numerous media interviews with the scientists that about an hour after the earthquake they felt a need to alert people in the Indian Ocean region about a possible tsunami. We also know that they felt handicapped by the absence of a high-tech tsunami detection and alert-dissemination system in the region. Nothing around the Indian Ocean approximates the sophistication of the Pacific Rim tsunami warning network.

To their credit, the Center’s personnel wanted to take some kind of action to alert the region. According to the Center’s director, as quoted in The International Herald Tribune: “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.” (Ref: http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/28/news/warning.html)

Without a notification plan, the scientists resorted to telephoning their colleagues in south Asia, with virtually no success. What they did not do was telephone the major international news media, such as the Associated Press, CNN, the BBC, Reuters or any other news organization with world-wide communications capabilities.

In other words, in the 41 minutes between issuing a bulletin that mentioned a possible tsunami and when the first waves are now thought to have reached Sri Lanka, the scientists used the telephone to call one person at a time rather than call the mass media to help issue a warning through their broadcast and cable networks.

A NOAA spokesperson later gave what may be the most telling comment about the PTWC’s crisis communications preparedness: "Not only was the center focused on warning agencies, it does not have an official list of media contacts." (Ref: http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050107-050909-7208r.htm)

Would alerting the news media in those first critical minutes have made a difference in how many people died in south Asia? With proper planning and coordination of media protocols, I’m certain lives could have been saved.

And I’m not alone. Many others around the world have questioned the lack of an effective warning. A woman in Sri Lanka who lost her father, sister and niece was interviewed by National Public Radio: “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.”
(Ref: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4277195)

On January 11, the day NOAA’s administrator visited the PTWC and met with the Honolulu news media, I posted questions on my web log site that I felt might well be directed to him. They are still relevant today:

• 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?

The administrator did answer many media questions that day, including a variation of the last one. According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, he called the PTWC staff’s actions “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. (Ref: http://starbulletin.com/2005/01/12/news/index1.html)

The sad fact is the “warning procedures in place” on December 26 saved no lives and protected no property. Nothing PTWC scientists knew or did that day helped people in the tsunami danger zone.

I respectfully submit to this committee that the PTWC’s apparent inability to issue effective warnings is unacceptable. I have proposed a five-point program that would help NOAA shift its thinking and its culture to include meaningful media notification after future tsunami-generating earthquakes:

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

The media can be an efficient way to send warnings to threatened populations when time is of the essence, and NOAA would do well to integrate them into its crisis communications planning. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your deliberations on this important matter.

Submitted by:
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI

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