Tsunami Soul Search

Geologic plates pressing against each other slipped violently, created the bulge on the bottom that could be as high as 10 metres and hundreds of kilometres long. A column of water of billions of tons moved. The reaction caused waves equal in power to a million atomic bombs. Having started more than 10 km beneath the sea floor close to Sumatra, Indonesia, the waves crashed into the Indian Ocean coasts on Sunday.

It is said that this undersea earth quake, that caused the tsunami on the 26 Dec. 2004, was so powerful that it even disturbed the earth’s rotation.

Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, scientists running the tsunami warning system for the Pacific had issued a cautionary report from their Honolulu hub, to 26 participating countries. India was not among them. It would seem no one communicated with those oceans away, with those who could be directly hit. Why was the information not relayed?

The waves took four hours to reach the east coast of Africa and in all that time no mention had been made of the possibility of unusual wave occurrences and no serious warning was issued. It is amazing that no monitors and satellites picked up anything unusual about the sea surface.

Go digital! We went digital. Communication is the buzz word of the 21 century. We email, fax, we SMS. We video conference, check baby’s movements in the womb. We give electronic instructions to robots to perform surgery. From the moon we talk to earth.

In Hong Kong a weather picture via satellite picks up a man getting his bike from a grid on the banks of a canal in Amsterdam. I have been told that information on the number-plate of a car can be spotted by a satellite.

Night-vision goggles cut through darkness. We can track nuclear bombs being detonated anywhere in the world.

How tragic then is that no one saw, felt or heard to give warning. How tragic then is the fact that no one talked about the possibility of a tsunami. How tragic then is this statement: “I did not know who to contact” from a man at one of the stations set up to check ocean movements. We are told that many tracking and monitoring stations were not manned because it was a holiday.

Yes, it would have been a monumental task to warn all, it would have created panic and hysteria, it would have been unbelievable. It would have saved thousands of lives.

Where were those weather stations and tidal gauges? Were there no ships at sea? No high tech navy, no super submarines? No low flying planes? Where were the Coast Guards? And where were the fishermen with their electronic equipment?

Was no one concerned enough with the irregular wave movements and tides prior to the tsunami arriving at the various shores?

We talk of what could have been in place to monitor the Indian Ocean Region. We hear of costs and priorities. It only happens very rarely, perhaps once every two centuries. Many questions arise about the mysterious ways in which Gods work. Religious leaders have different answers. We can blame it global warming and President Bush for not wanting to sign the Kyoto protocol.

The most provocative question however is “What is this failure of communication?”

Mr. Murthy, a tsunami expert, says “the waves are totally predictable. We have travel time charts of waves that cover all the Indian Ocean. There is no reason for a single individual to get killed in a tsunami.”

No, not a single, but hundreds of thousands of singles.