Thai Experts Got The Warning Hours Before

[dr_Pat_Pong]

It hurts to ponder, but I think it is clear that a warning protocol and public education could have saved many. Recall, there was quite a bit of chatter about the quake on this web forum even just minutes after it occurred, including the location and magnitude as reported by the USGS. The info was there, if people knew how to act on it. Of course, even seismologists and oceanographers did not have enough information to predict the tsunami in any accurate way; at best they could say that there is a window of risk over a several hour period... but imagine if everyone had mentioned the possibility to their neighbor and people's attention had been perked up that morning. How many lives could have been changed just by being primed and in the right frame of mind to react? 

Hindsight is 20/20, but if I had been visiting one of the islands or coastal towns (and still felt the quake and saw the online discussions) rather than being in Bangkok, I think I would have been scared and dragged "me and mine" inland for the day.  Nonetheless, on my own private scale, I suspect I would have felt too unsure to actually go around alarming neighbors and instructing them to do the same, for fear of being thought a paranoid fool. 

That's the kind of human nature that a warning system has to transcend. I think you need a formal system to get information spread around on short notice, e.g. "yes, that was a serious quake". At the same time, I think many people need to be already informed with the implications, e.g. "a big quake means a tsunami risk".

I don't think it is wise to have everyone's fate rest on the judgement of one person situated far away... it would be better to prepare the populace to make appropriate decisions themselves.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

IMHO That sums it up very well. Thanks for the contribution.

[Pink Mist]

Hindsite is 20/20 for sure.

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Hindsite is 20/20 for sure.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well ... hindsight is Bronco

[ronz28]

CNN, BBC Etc. Should Take Responsibility to Warn People from now on

The world wide news organizations have meteorology departments with worldwide weather information, and news. If they don't have an alarmed earthquake detecting seismograph or are not plugged into the world wide information systems like NOAA etc. they need to get it. Ted Turner created CNN and said he would give billions to the UN to help children - if only he would have made his network a part of the worldwide earthquake warning systems. Governments have demonstrated they drop the ball in being the middle man with the information. CNN, BCC, etc. just need to immediately announce major earthquakes and provide a little information about getting away from the Tsunami waves. I don't know of anything that could get the word out faster than satellite TV. We are dealing with 500 MPH waves here so extraordinary action is needed. Enough of the people would then have the information they need and would spread the word. We got to get this out of Government hands. They have failed us. I would far rather have been alerted about a major earthquake that doesn't impact me than weather in 50 cities around the world.

Edited January 1, 2005 by ronz28

[chuchok]

Phone call saved an entire village

01.01.05 4.00pm

by Paul Smith

People in an Indian village were saved from death in the tsunami by a phone call from Singapore.

Nallavadu, in the Union Territory of Pondicherry near Chennai, escaped the loss of its population by the quick thinking of a former resident, The Hindu newspaper reported.

The village is part of a project run by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation and one of the foundation's former volunteers now works in Singapore.

The volunteer - identified by The Hindu's website as Vijayakumar - saw a tsunami warning in Singapore and immediately phoned the village's research centre, setting off a local alert.

A warning was repeatedly announced over the village's public address system and a siren sounded allowing people time to move away from the danger area before the waves hit.

As a result, not one of Nallavadu's 3,600 residents was killed while the surrounding area suffered massive loss of life.

The Indian government says that in total there are 10,736 confirmed and presumed dead as a result of the Boxing Day disaster.

[planetvoyager]

Other thing is I am totally pissed off by local governments announcing wave warnings for every minor quake following (there have been at least 20 quakes since that day, no fakes, but issuing an alarm for everyopne of them???

I got pain in my feet from walking up and down the mountain and no shoes in Kamala.

Typical, now after this unfortunate disaster, it is necessary it seems by some individuals to find a scapegoat to blame. So, yes we boot out this earthquake expert

and everyone els in that office and destroy their careesr and that will make these people happy. "I got pain in my feet from walking up and down the mountain and no shoes in Kamal" Oh yeah! Incredible! that Tracer0 makes this statement in light of more that 150,000 dead. Again, this just a bunch of spoiled farang parasites who have not helped in any way with the aftermath but sit in beer bars drinking, stinking and picking up bar girls.

Planetvoyager

[dboy69]

NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/internat...l/worldspecial4

/31wave.html?incamp=article_popular_2

How Scientists and Victims Watched Helplessly

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Correction Appended

It was 7 p.m. Seattle time on Dec. 25 when Vasily V. Titov raced to his office,...

Two hours had already passed since the quake, and there was no established model of what a tsunami might do in the Indian Ocean. Ninety percent of tsunamis occur in the Pacific, and that was where most research had been done.

Dr. Titov, a mathematician who works for a government marine laboratory, began to assemble his digital tools on his computer's hard drive: a three-dimensional map of the Indian Ocean seafloor and the seismic data showing the force, breadth and direction of the earthquake's punch to the sea.

As he set to work, Sumatra's shores were already a soup of human flotsam. Thailand to the east was awash. The pulse of energy transferred from seabed to water, traveling at jetliner speed, was already most of the way across the Bay of Bengal and approaching unsuspecting villagers and tourists, fishermen and bathers, from the eight-foot-high coral strands of the Maldives to the teeming shores of Sri Lanka and eastern India. In the end, Dr. Titov could not get ahead of that wave with his numbers. He could not help avert the wreckage and death. But alone in his office, following his computer model of the real tsunami, he began to understand, as few others in the world did at that moment, that this was no local disaster. With an eerie time lag, his data would reveal the dimensions of the catastrophe that was unfolding across eight brutal hours on Sunday, one that stole tens of thousands of lives and remade the coasts of the Asian subcontinent.

For those on the shores of the affected countries, the reckoning with the tsunami's power came all but out of the blue, and cost them their lives. It began near a corner of the island of Sumatra, and ended 3,000 miles away on the East African shore.

For the scientists in Hawaii, at the planet's main tsunami center, who managed to send out one of the rare formal warnings, there was intense frustration. They had useful information; they were trained to get word out; but they were stymied by limitations, including a lack of telephone numbers for counterparts in other countries.

For Colleen McGinn, a disaster relief worker in Melbourne, Australia, the developing crisis would send her off on an aid mission that she could not have comprehended and that United Nations officials have projected to be the greatest relief effort ever mounted.

For others like Phil Cummins, an Australian seismologist, what was happening made all too much sense. He had grasped the dangers a year earlier, and in 2004 had delivered a Powerpoint presentation to tsunami experts in Japan and Hawaii. "It really seems strange now to see the title," Dr. Cummins recalled yesterday. "Tsunami in the Indian Ocean - Why should we care?"

Hawaii: Helpless Warners

He wore two beepers, in case one failed. Both chirped. It was a languorous Christmas afternoon, with his girlfriend away and nothing to do, and Barry Hirshorn, 48, was asleep. As a geophysicist, he was used to having his rest interrupted. Almost daily, earthquakes announced themselves somewhere, usually modest nuisances, and off went his pagers.

It was just after 3 p.m. in Honolulu, nearly halfway around the globe from where the earth was trembling. Mr. Hirshorn worked at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, a stubby cinderblock structure set in a weedy plain in Ewa Beach. He was one of five staff scientists entrusted with the big task of alerting Pacific countries and the United States military to deadly tsunamis. "I knew it wasn't tiny," he said. "Probably over a 6." The messages on his beepers indicated alerts from two far-apart seismic monitoring stations, meaning the quake had power. Shrugging into a shirt, he hopped onto his "duty bike," and pedaled the several hundred yards to the center, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Stuart Weinstein, 43, was already at a terminal in the windowless operations room, staring at the thick blue seismic lines that signaled an "event." "This is a big earthquake," he recalled thinking. "Maybe a 7." Dr. Weinstein began pinpointing the location. Sliding into the seat beside him, Mr. Hirshorn waited to calculate the magnitude. Within minutes, they concluded it was a quake of 8.0 magnitude. More data arrived, and they reworked their calculations. But they stayed with 8.0. At 3:14 p.m., 15 minutes after the earthquake struck, they issued a routine bulletin announcing an event off Sumatra with a magnitude of 8.0. It added, "There is no tsunami warning or watch in effect." This referred to the Pacific. The bulletin alerted perhaps 26 countries, including Indonesia and Thailand, though it did not go to other coastal areas of the Indian Ocean, for they were not part of any warning system.

Next, the men tackled a slower but more precise means to measure an earthquake, using waves that pierce the earth's mantle rather than simply the initial waves. They got an 8.5, a marked difference in possible threat. "Uh oh," Dr. Weinstein said.

It was 3:45 and time to call the boss: Dr. Charles McCreery stood in a friend's living room a few miles away, delivering a gift after a brunch at his sister-in-law's. His 4-year-old twin daughters were hoping that he would soon assemble their new bicycles. Dr. McCreery, 54, said a fresh bulletin should go out, reporting the higher magnitude and mentioning the chance of a tsunami near the epicenter. But he and his colleagues doubted that an 8.5 quake would unleash a far-ranging "teletsunami" that could traverse an ocean and wipe out villages. Once the second bulletin left, at 4:04 p.m., there was little more that their machines could confide, unless tsunamis crossed the Indian Ocean and entered the Pacific. They had no sea monitors in the Indian Ocean. Dr. Weinstein scrolled the Internet. They tuned in CNN on television. Only in the same way that most of the world learned, from news reports, did the three men come to see the ghastly reality, the widening tsunami paths and the lethal coastal destruction. A wire dispatch at 5:30 told them that Sri Lanka had been pounded. Their spirits drooped. "More are going to die," Mr. Hirshorn said. Their instinct was to somehow tell more, to warn the region that it would continue, to reach people who could clear beaches. But how? Mr. Hirshorn recalled a tsunami expert he knew in Australia, called and got an answering machine. He left a message. Someone phoned the International Tsunami Information Center, asking if they knew people in the stricken region. The center simply had no contacts in this distant world.

At 7:25, an e-mail message from Harvard's seismology group reckoned the earthquake at 8.9. Now they understood why such a monster tsunami had been unleashed.

They continued to scramble to reach countries that could still escape death, but they were reaching into a void. Around 10:15 p.m., they did speak to the United States embassies in Mauritius and Madagascar, which promised to warn Somalia and Kenya, not yet hit, but it is unclear what came of this. Their day ended, engulfed in gloom. "Part of me said I wish it had occurred in the Pacific, because we could have saved an awful lot of people," Dr. Weinstein said. "We felt terrible that we couldn't get the messages to where they were most needed."

Japan: Looking On

The seismograph at the Matsushiro Seismological Observatory, about 110 miles northwest of Tokyo, is buried inside a mountain tunnel. The tunnel had first been created as an alternative headquarters for the country's imperial military during the final years of the war in the Pacific, and scientists saw it had advantages for recording as precisely as possible tremors in the earth: protection from the effects of temperature and wind.

"Our job is to identify the epicenter and the size of earthquakes all over the world," said Masashi Kobayashi, an official at the observatory. "There are many observatories recording the earthquakes in the vicinity of Japan, but this observatory is the only one in Japan for observing the earthquakes of the world."

And Mr. Kobayashi said he did not mistake the significance of what got recorded deep inside the mountain on Sunday. "I got surprised," he said. The recording showed an earthquake with a magnitude of 8. "In the vicinity of Japan," he said, "that size is recorded only once in several years to 10 years." Mr. Kobayashi said he had calculated the location, as well as the magnitude of the quake. "I reported it is west of Sumatra island, including the latitude and longitude," he said. And with that, he said, he realized something else. "When I found it was in the ocean," he said, "I thought the first thing to worry about was a tsunami."

There has been over the last several days, as the death count from the earthquake and tsunami has steadily climbed to more than 100,000, much discussion of whether enough was done by scientists and government officials around the world to relay word of the possible peril millions of people suddenly faced. There have been accounts in newspapers of officials in Indonesia and Thailand and Malaysia struggling to comprehend the threat and get out warnings. All agree that, whatever people's intentions or capabilities, no sufficient warnings were transmitted that might have limited the toll at some of the hardest-hit places.

What Mr. Kobayashi did with his information, and concern, is not entirely clear. In an interview, he said he had made his reports to headquarters. It is not clear what, if anything, his superiors did. Asked directly if he thought his reports led to any movement toward issuing a warning about a tsunami, Mr. Kobayashi said, "My job is to decide the size and the location of the earthquake epicenter, so it is beyond my job to answer that question."

...

The possibility of tsunamis arising in the Indian Ocean had not completely escaped international attention. During the 1990's, an obscure United Nations group, the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific, periodically considered the extension of tsunami alert systems to parts of the globe outside the Pacific, including the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. At a meeting of the group in Lima, Peru, in September 1997, for example, its members had considered proposals to expand the network to the Indian Ocean, particularly because of Indonesia's tectonic activity. Nothing concrete happened. Among the scientists who kept up a restrained but insistent pressure was Dr. Phil Cummins, a seismologist with Australia's geosciences agency. He continued to gather and present evidence that an Indian Ocean tsunami was inevitable, although unpredictable in terms of timing, and posed a grave threat to many countries. He met with no ill will, but with considerable inertia, he said. "Just look at the name," he said. "The international body designed to coordinate international tsunami-related activity is mandated as a Pacific entity."

Dr. Cummins cited details from dusty records kept by the Dutch colonists in Indonesia and from Dr. Sieh's coral studies that great 19th-century earthquakes in the 1,200-mile arc of faults west of Sumatra had generated destructive ocean-spanning waves. He made his case in October 2003, at a meeting of the international tsunami group in Wellington, New Zealand, when he pushed for formal expansion of the international network into the Indian Ocean.

The group rebuffed him, saying, in the stiff language of meeting minutes, that any such expansion could occur only if an overarching governing body dealing in global oceanographic issues formally redefined its "terms of reference."

In the meantime, it voted to establish "a sessional working group to prepare a recommendation to establish an intersessional working group that will study the establishment of a regional warning system for the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean." Dr. Cummins prepared a position paper at that meeting laying out his arguments. He used a computer model similar to that used by Dr. Titov in Seattle to study how tsunamis spread from the great Sumatran quake of 1833.

He simulated the quake in a mathematical simulacrum of the ocean, and simulated waves radiated until they struck as far north as eastern India and all around western Australia. The Sumatran shore east of the fault was devastated, and a directional pulse of energy, resulting in higher waves, splayed westward like a shotgun blast.

At the time, the images of those reconstructed virtual waves must have seemed like yet another computer analysis, predicting yet another potential disaster that might or might not occur in this, or the next century. Now, the reconstructions, so similar to what happened last Sunday, carry a disturbing weight.

...

Seattle: A Final Picture

Back in Seattle, around the time that the beaches of East Africa were being swept by the great pulse of waves, Dr. Titov was close to finishing his fresh-minted model for simulating Indian Ocean tsunamis.

He hit enter on his terminal keyboard, and the computer began calculating numbers.

As the real tsunami was spending its last destructive power, his virtual tsunami began. It burst out like a shotgun blast from the epicenter of the quake, focused due west from the fault line.

By 4:28 a.m. Sunday morning, the simulation had run its course, and Dr. Titov posted his work on the Web and stumbled home, knowing, but still not knowing since he had seen no news, what had happened.

Like everyone else, he became transfixed by television images of heaving seas and devastation, with one difference, he said: ''It feels like I have already seen it.''

Reporting for this article was contributed by Eric Lipton in Washington, Eric Lichtblau in Indonesia,Marc Lacey in Kenya, N. R. Kleinfeld in New York, David Rohde in Sri Lanka,Yasuko Kamiizumi in Japanand Michele Kayal in Hawaii.

Correction: January 1, 2005, Saturday:

Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday tracing the gradual spread of awareness of the Indian Ocean tsunami among scientists and others last week referred incorrectly to information provided in 2003 to the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific.

At a meeting of the group in 2003, Dr. Phil Cummins, an Australian seismologist, told the group that a warning system for the Indian Ocean was needed. But it was only after that meeting, at the bidding of the group, that he began work on a position paper compiling evidence on the danger of big tsunamis caused by earthquakes near Sumatra. He is still working on the position paper, which includes computer modeling that shows devastation from waves created by a strong underwater earthquake. He did not present the paper at the meeting.

Full article @

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/blog/dboy69/

Edited January 1, 2005 by dboy69

[onethailand]

Ouch... what this article basically says is there was very little that could have been done to estimate the power of a potential tsunami, primarily because there were no sensors in the Indian Ocean...

In light of this report, I think we should cease recriminations against the Meteorological Department and PM Thaksin until we fully understand what happened... the MD was surely far less experienced in tsunami prediction than any of these experts.

Thanks for reposting that, dboy.

Edited January 1, 2005 by onethailand

[Dickie]

Again, this just a bunch of spoiled farang parasites who have not helped in any way with the aftermath but sit in beer bars drinking, stinking and picking up bar girls. 

Planetvoyager

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How can they be parasites when they're paying for the stuff? I think you need to lie down a while...

[dboy69]

I agree Onethailand,

Perhaps recriminations aren't in order, however I don't think the pressure should be eased to explore the how and why. Who knew what when, and how "they" chose to use the available information. Could this tragedy have been avoided? Could the governments of Indonesia, Thailand, India, et al have given suitable warning? What types of systems, evacuation plans, signage, education, be implemented with (unfortunately) limited funds? Would people have listened?

Only through this exploration of the decision making process can one arrive at a reasonable understanding, and hopefully, a system to avoid such tragedy in the future.

I grew up on the west coast of the US (Rim of Fire), where we are all made familiar, at one time or another, about the signs of a tsunami. It is exceedingly unfortunate that so many people were totally unaware of those signs. Most areas hit by the tsunami experienced receeding water prior to the wave striking... for those of us in the know a serious indication, and time to run for high ground. Even without evacuation plans or routes, or even emergency remediation plans; this little bit of knowledge would have saved countless lives, certainly not all, but countless. THAT, in my estimation would be the starting point... education

I sincerely hope that, in LOS, this doesn't just recede into twilight, to be mostly forgotten or become one of those "remember when" stories.

I apologize for the length of previous post

My heart goes out to all those affected.

Edited January 1, 2005 by dboy69

[davidmmurin]

There's going to be a lot of people reading that article who think.

"I wish he hadn't said that".

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well I came back to the USA #5. Since have been listening to the news coverage with DJ's AM radio here. Alert systems were brought up on the Mike Savage hour 660AM and wondered why all the meterologist hadn't predicted this wave. They seemed to think that nature( the birds knew )out in the ocean that this was happening and told the other specie that they needed to go to higher ground. The building codes were not by California standards nor even Hurricane or Tornado proof. Florida had many this year ..Yes.. Engineering cost maybe a big factor but let's face it you do it once or do it over...

Edited January 1, 2005 by davidmmurin

[Richard W]

In light of this report, I think we should cease recriminations against the Meteorological Department and PM Thaksin until we fully understand what happened...  the MD was surely far less experienced in tsunami prediction than any of these experts.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All this report shows is that the possibility of a tsunami was there, but not the certainty. This much is not news.

What did the second bulletin say?

[dboy69]

Education indeed...

An interesting article in The Nation referring to an elder sea gypsy;

Sarmao Kathalay, the village chief, clearly recalls every moment of the day. Miracles apart, he attributes the villagers’ survival to their firm faith in ancestral lore.

“The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will come back fast and will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared,” says the 65-year-old sea gypsy.

That truth was certainly borne out on Sunday. Never questioning the handed-down wisdom, Sarmao hastily led all 181 members to Wat Samakkitham on a hill inland. Some were injured, but they spent days at the temple until all had recovered and were ready to return to their usual abode.

[dboy69]

According to International Tsunami Information Center (ITIC) the person who "knew" would have been the following... notice the incomplete contact information.... not sure what that would have meant

(according to ITSU "Official warning messages are assured of delivery only to the ITSU national contacts"

Member States/ Natl. Contacts

ITSU National Contacts, ITSU Officers, ITIC, PTWC and IOC/ITSU Secretariat address information

This is the full list of the ITSU National Contacts, ITSU Officers, ITIC, PTWC and IOC/ITSU Secretariat address information.

THAILAND

Lt. Sukit Yensung

Meteorology Department

Ministry of Communication

612 Sukumvit

Bangkok 10110

THAILAND

Tel: unknown

Fax: unknown

E-mail: unknown

Web Site: unknown

[meemiathai]

the weather minister should resign, no question ask.

He shouldnt only resign, they should boot him out and the other 4 idiots.

difference between 7.4 and 9.0 is 10000 times more power.

Even with their wrong numbers it should have beenn 50-75 times more power.

Do we now get compensation froim the goverment for screwing up(g)?

Other thing is I am totally pissed off by local governments announcing wave warnings for every minor quake following (there have been at least 20 quakes since that day, no fakes, but issuing an alarm for everyopne of them???

I got pain in my feet from walking up and down the mountain and no shoes in Kamala.

I am lucky to be alive but I should like to stick the whole government in my shop and clean it out by HAND. I had to swim 3 m down, 5 m up to get through a door to my second floor, everyting on first floor destroyed.

HAHA! I find this really funny!

Can the government really do anything right?

It is wrong not to give any warnings and it is also wrong to give warnings!

So?

[meemiathai]

Thais largely do not differentiate between the various groups, they are all "Thai" -- do you want them to start doing so, a la Malaysia and Indonesia, where periodic racist riots see Chinese homes and businesses destroyed?

I don't think many here know about this.

[meemiathai]

Other thing is I am totally pissed off by local governments announcing wave warnings for every minor quake following (there have been at least 20 quakes since that day, no fakes, but issuing an alarm for everyopne of them???

I got pain in my feet from walking up and down the mountain and no shoes in Kamala.

Typical, now after this unfortunate disaster, it is necessary it seems by some individuals to find a scapegoat to blame. So, yes we boot out this earthquake expert

and everyone els in that office and destroy their careesr and that will make these people happy. "I got pain in my feet from walking up and down the mountain and no shoes in Kamal" Oh yeah! Incredible! that Tracer0 makes this statement in light of more that 150,000 dead. Again, this just a bunch of spoiled farang parasites who have not helped in any way with the aftermath but sit in beer bars drinking, stinking and picking up bar girls. 

Planetvoyager

Can you use the quote button next time, please?

[Felt 35]

I don`t understand why this subject are on a tred at all!

All of us regulary visitor on TV know who eventually are responsible if any are to blame for not have tried to s3end out a warning.

The last two years I have heard him at least twice, No SARS,No birdflue and soon it will be Tsunami, no no

[russell marriott]

http://www.chiangmainews.com/thenation/hea...s_15908069.html

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2004/12/28...s_15908069.html

Warning rejected to protect tourism

Published on December 28, 2004

Minutes after the earthquake hit northern Sumatra at 7.58am on Sunday, officials of the Meteo-rological Department, who were at a seminar in Cha-am, convened an emergency meeting chaired by Supharerk Tansrirat-tanawong, director-general.

They had just learned that the Bangkok office had reported a quake measuring at 8.1 on the Richter scale, which was much lower than the

level officially recorded later.

“We didn’t think there would be subsequent seismic waves, because a similar quake of 7.6 on the Richter scale, which hit Sumatra on November 2, 2002, did not affect Thailand,” said a member of the department who asked not to be named.

Moreover, the quake this time hit west of Sumatra and officials thought the island might offer a natural shelter, preventing any waves from breaking towards Phuket and its vicinity, he said.

With slightly less than one hour before the waves came ashore, Supharerk said, the department officials did not expect a tsunami. There are just four people on the department’s 900-person staff who are earthquake experts, he said. Also, a tsunami had not hit Thailand in more than 300 years.

But sources said they did discuss the likelihood that a tsunami could hit Thailand’s Andaman Sea coastal towns. This was also played down.

“The very important factor in making the decision was that it’s high [tourist] season and hotel rooms were nearly 100-per-cent full. If we issued a warning, which would have led to evacuation, [and if nothing happened], what would happen then? Business would be instantaneously affected. It would be beyond the Meteorological Department’s ability to handle. We could go under, if [the tsunami] didn’t come,” said a source who attended the meeting.

“We hesitated for a while whether we should issue a warning or not. It was discussed but we didn’t have a chance to do it.”

Supharerk denied that tourism factored into the discussion at the 11th hour. “I think we have done our best,” he said.

Precisely at 9am that Sunday, waves as high as 3 to 10 metres hit the main southern coastal provinces of Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi and Ranong.

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[andyadam]

Just for a bit of information, the last recorded tsunami in this region was in about 1880!

Amid the mud slining, people ask why was no one warned about the Tsunami, yea they knew about the quake but a Tsunami of this size in open water is almost un noticable, maybe only a meter high.

[Darknight]

Expert: I tried to warn of tsunami

From CNN

PHUKET, Thailand (Reuters) -- A Thai expert says he tried to warn the government a deadly tsunami might be sweeping towards tourist-packed beaches, but couldn't find anyone to take his calls.

Samith Dhammasaroj said Monday he was sure a tsunami was coming as soon as he heard about the massive December 26 earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra island that measured magnitude 9.0 -- the world's biggest in 40 years.

"I tried to call the director-general of the meteorological office, but his phone was always busy," Samith 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," said the former chief of the meteorological department now charged with setting up an early warning disaster system for Thailand.

"I knew that one day we would have this type of tsunami. I warned that there would be a big disaster," he told reporters.

"Everyone laughed at me and said I was a bad guy who wanted to ruin the tourist industry," he added.

The tsunami took just 75 minutes to hit the beaches and islands of Thailand's Andaman Sea coast, 600 km (375 miles) from the earthquake's epicenter.

Now more than 5,100 people are dead, nearly half of them foreign tourists who abandoned Europe's cold, dark winter for golden sands and turquoise seas, and left 3,800 missing, nearly 1,700 of them foreigners.

Downstairs from where he spoke, dozens of foreigners were still scanning message boards, trying to match grisly photos of bloated, battered bodies to the smiling pictures of missing friends and relatives.

"I feel very sorry for the people who died," Samith said. "I will make sure this thing does not happen again."

The early warning system for Thailand -- which has not had a natural disaster in living memory worse than floods during the annual monsoon -- would be ready in six months, Samith promised.

"We will make the system very efficient," he said.

Roaring sea

Preliminary investigations by a team of six Japanese experts showed that the wall of water hit beaches along the Thai coast at different speeds and heights, with the phenomenon exacerbated by a high tide that fed the tsunami as it neared land.

Khao Lak beach, lined with hotels and resorts especially popular among Scandinavians and Germans just north of Phuket, took the worst hit from waves up to 10.5 meters (34 ft) high.

They roared up Khao Lak's gently sloping beach at speeds of up to 8 meters a second (29 kilometers an hour), said Professor Hideo Matsutomi, who led the Japanese team.

"There have been six major tsunami in this region since 1797, but I think this last tsunami was the biggest," he said.

Tsunami are much more frequent in the Pacific Ocean and countries there have long established an early warning system to protect them from disaster.

Samith said countries in the Indian Ocean had to follow suit and set up a network of underwater sea monitors which might cost as little as $20 million to build.

Warnings of imminent inundations would be sent out automatically on television and radio and by text messages to mobile phones.

The system would help woo back tourists scared away by the mass loss of life, Samith said.

"No-one can predict an earthquake, but you can predict a tsunami," he said. "We will build a good system."

"We will help tourists come back to Thailand

[The_Moog]

(Not sure that Khun Samith has served his own cause well by that interview).

I'm still curious about what action was taken during the time from that first wave hitting our shores to the last one - 75 minutes later.

[andyadam]

(Not sure that Khun Samith has served his own cause well by that interview).

I'm still curious about what action was taken during the time from that first wave hitting our shores to the last one -  75 minutes later.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Panic, confusion and chaos.

[andyadam]

I understand that Andy is an active rescue member and as such you don't want to loose time and energy with thinking about what went wrong and what could be improved in future. You do your horrible work and you have such strong emotions that you even don't want to think and even less to talk how the death of hundreds if not of thousands could have been avoided. You are doing what you can to limit the casualties NOW!

At such a moment you leave the question if any of the death's could have been avoided to their family, their friends, their beloved ones. And that is a question they are entitled to get an answer to.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Limbo, thanks for the praise, I'm doing what I can, thats all.

I agree with some of your point, the families need closure and maybe they need to blame someone but the point I was trying to make was how futile this is. It's a natural phenomenon, so who is to blame. The authorities knew about the quake, the epicentre was south west of the tip of Sumatra so in theoryThailand was sheltered, but the quake traveled along the fault north and as I am led to understand this is what caused the wave, so what time was the wave formed????

Big question eh?

As you can guess, I do think about what went wrong and a warning system would have been fantastic and would have saved many of the lives that were lost, lets hope we get one now!

A bit off topic but I heard a tale yesterday about a young girl who saved about a hundred people by remembering her geography lesson! Just before her holiday they covered Tsunamis!!!

She saw the water going out and told her parents, the warned more and so on!!

So maybe Education would help, I think we all know a little more now than we did 2 weeks ago.

I don't have particularly strong emotions about this, just rationality, I like to think. I lost both parents by my mid twenties, it tends to make you look at things a bit differently, people to blame - yeah maybe, but what will it do for ME?

For anyone who lost a friend or loved one, with the deepest respect, don't dwell on ifs and maybes, it will make it harder to bear your loss. You must now just take each day as it comes but never shut out the people you have left, they are hurting as much as you.

As my dear old mum told me, if you love someone, they will be with you forever.

I have found out how true that is over the years.

I hope I have not offended anyone, if I have it is not my intention.

Andy