Posted on 01/01/2005 2:14:42 AM PST by bd476
Of course every problem needs a ton of money to solve~!
I remember the original earthquake thread HERE ON FR hours before the tsunami hit- warning would have been as simple as making a bunch of phone calls immediately. (free too)
But when a disaster this big happens once a century people just dont think about it- and you can put a warning system in place for any of an infinite number of possible problems.
Magnitude 9.0 Earthquake - OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA
A great earthquake occurred at 00:58:55 (UTC) on Sunday, December 26, 2004. (snip)
The earthquake occurred at 7:58:55 P.M. EST (New York, U.S.A.), that is 2:58:55 P.M. HST (Hawaii, U.S.A.); and that is 7:58:55 A.M., Dec. 26, 2004 in Sumatra / Aceh and in Phu Ket, Thailand.
bd476's post was 47 minutes, 31 seconds later, which is a quick response, for a bunch of volunteers, here. The time in Sumatra / Aceh and Thailand, was 8:46:26 A.M., Dec. 26th.
If it could be done, here, it could have been done over there --- an Internet connection that is more than likely available to most news / weather / maritime stations --- already quite a lot of sophistication that was unavailable to earlier generations.
I would not be blaming the destruction of life on "being cheated out of life's lottery by greater powers that could have done more."
There is no one to blame. There is a lesson, taught many times, awaiting all who will learn.
Did you miss the thread about the Thai government being warned, but they chose not to spread the alarm? Didn't want to "hurt the tourist industry".
I'd imagine that actually quite a lot of people knew about the earthquake, and they knew what would be the consequences.
Most have probably always known.
Mostly here in the States, would we find large numbers of people trying to cash in on the Lawyers' Lifes' Lottery.
Here, where we used to go swimming at night, and I cannot recall ever seeing a sign reading "Beach Closed" for reasons other than, somebody needed to clean up the area.
I recently purchased a 5 Gal. compressed air tank; but then, the next day, I took it back to the store. Because the pressure from gov't regulators has been so great, that only the cheapest manufacturers can supply such tanks, and sure enough, with my glasses on, I found that it was made in China, instead of Fort Wayne, IN or Lincoln, NE.
Because we have overkill of warnings, we have crippled our livelihood, in exchange for more risky items from lands far away.
You get what you pay for, in both direct, and indirect, costs.
Then burned, you complain to government to foot the bill for building some quality bureacracy that you expect to be attentive to your needs.
Yet it is staffed by followers of mythically-proscribed policies and procedures.
When all along, some basic common sense inculcated by the wisdom of some elders, would have worked miracles.
' Did you miss the thread about the Thai government being warned, but they chose not to spread the alarm? Didn't want to "hurt the tourist industry"."
Apparently Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine missed that news.
She will chair hearings in the Senate, when Congress resumes, as to why NOAA did not warn the 11 nations affected.
But, since Snowe oversees NOAA, surely she must understand that most of the 11 nations involved, did not participate in the warning system.
Snowe is "exploring and looking into why NOAA was not able to provide this valuable, life-saving information to the 11 affected nations," Snowe's spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier said.
"But only two countries in the affected region, Indonesia and Australia,
both of which take part in the Pacific Ocean tsunami warning system, received the NOAA bulletin.
Countries located across the Indian Ocean from the earthquake, including India and Sri Lanka, do not take part in the warning system."
"Officials at NOAA's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii have said that they lacked contacts in the Indian Ocean region,
where tsunamis are rare."
"The center is geared toward detecting tsunamis and issuing alerts in the Pacific region, where large, destructive waves are much more common."
"Snowe chairs the Senate's Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, which has oversight over the NOAA.
" April Boyd, a spokeswoman for ranking Democratic member John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, said she expected hearings on NOAA's reaction."
It looks like Senators from both sides are going to be knocking themselves out to rush to the cameras to blame the US- when of course, it was their committee that had oversight over NOAA in the first place.
Snowe is such an embarassment. Thanks for posting that information.
True.
And all ports capable of berthing them are sheltered.
I'm not sure what your definition of "berth" is. I've been to Phuket before, anchored less than a mile off of Patong Beach, where the major damage was. The big deck amphib with us was further out, but not a whole lot. I don't know what would have happened if we had been there when a wave of this size went through. Dragging anchor and ending up grounded could be a real possibility.
I don’t know either, just talking out my a~s.
I just figure I had a free pass to overstate when talking to a guy lampooning the stupidity of authorities because they don’t predict tsunamis by GPS transmitters attached to wild animals.
Tell it all to someone who hasn't spent several months at sea in a carrier battle group and since then has as a Ph.D. scientist conducted and reviewed applications for research in infectious diseases and neurobiology (including animal behavior)....
And "lampooning the authorities" is a favorite sport on the FR.
8~) In any case, a guy who served his country as a Marine (as did my father in WWII) has a sincere salute from this green-water squid any day of the week, FWIW.....
KHAO LAK, Thailand (Reuters) - Agitated elephants felt the tsunami coming, and their sensitivity saved about a dozen foreign tourists from the fate of thousands killed by the giant waves. "I was surprised because the elephants had never cried before," mahout Dang Salangam said on Sunday on Khao Lak beach at the eight-elephant business offering rides to tourists.
The elephants started trumpeting -- in a way Dang, 36, and his wife Kulada, 24, said could only be described as crying -- at first light, about the time an earthquake measured at a magnitude of 9.0 cracked open the sea bed off Indonesia's Sumatra island.
The elephants soon calmed down. But they started wailing again about an hour later and this time they could not be comforted despite their mahouts' attempts at reassurance.
"The elephants didn't believe the mahouts. They just kept running for the hill," said Wit Aniwat, 24, who takes the money from tourists and helps them on to the back of elephants from a sturdy wooden platform. Those with tourists aboard headed for the jungle-clad hill behind the resort beach where at least 3,800 people, more than half of them foreigners, would soon be killed. The elephants that were not working broke their hefty chains.
"Then we saw the big wave coming and we started running," Wit said. Around a dozen tourists were also running toward the hill from the Khao Lak Merlin Resort, one of a line of hotels strung along the 10 km (6-mile) beach especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans. "The mahouts managed to turn the elephants to lift the tourists onto their backs," Kulada said. She used her hands to describe how the huge beasts used their trunks to pluck the foreigners from the ground and deposit them on their backs. The elephants charged up the hill through the jungle, then stopped. The tsunami drove up to 1 km (1,000 yards) inshore from the gently sloping beach which had been so safe for children it made Khao Lak an ideal place for a family holiday. But it stopped short of where the elephants stood.
On Sunday, the elephants were back at work giving rides to the tourists on whom the area depends. German Ewald Heeg, who said he came from a small town near Frankfurt, said his charter company had offered his family -- wife, two daughters and one of their boyfriends -- the chance to go straight home, but he had turned it down. "Our family is OK so we stay here to make our holiday," he said. "Today, we make a safari. We go by elephants at first, then we make a boat trip."
***************
Go figure.......
I think it takes experience trained by a lot of critical thinking to be able to separate the truth from the hype. Yes, elephants (and most other animals) got the heck out of there. The have excellent hearing and don’t do stupid things like walk out to get a better look at an ocean doing strange things.
Maybe they did hear the 9.0 earthquake hundreds of miles away, but so did we so that gives no new information.
And they apparently didn’t start running for the hills until they “sensed”/heard the tsunami coming. That’s too late for GPS transmitters to be of help.
But expect more of this because there’s enough agenda driven people around to exaggerate this story as it’s retold and retold to make the world question the advances of science, capitalism, the supremacy of individual HUMAN rights and everything else the US stands for.
If you know of credible research where it a flock of animals in a tsunami’s path (but out of range of simply hearing the earthquake) migrated in mass to avoid the tsunami early enough that they could trigger GPS alarms, please show me.
Keep in mind that false alarms are very expensive so we don’t want to spend billions maintaining a tsunami early warning system that becomes a wolf warning system. ;^)
You probably haven't followed my suggestion to "look it up,", so here is an excerpt from a feature article in today Deseret News which contains references and a link to work reported in National Geographic and an interview with the chief veterinarian at Salt Lake City's Hogle Zoo.
Bon apetit'........
The online edition of National Geographic Magazine tells a strange tale about the monstrous tsunami that killed more than 162,000 residents of several Asian countries on Dec. 26. The reactions of wild and domestic animals seemed to show that they sensed tidal waves before they hit.
According to a National Geographic Web site, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0104_050104_tsunami_animals.html, reports circulated afterward that elephants screamed and ran for higher ground, dogs wouldn't leave the house, flamingos left the low ground and zoo animals "rushed into their shelters and could not be enticed to come back out." A variety of causes may help explain their actions, she said. Air pressure may change, or vibrations may shake the ground, or low frequency sounds may be generated by the events.
"Either the earthquake or onrushing ocean waves might produce sounds of too low frequency for humans to hear, a bass-note equivalent to whistles that are so shrill humans can't hear them but dogs can."
"From studies done in zoos, we know that animals do communicate with low-frequency tones," she said.
Currently, research is going on with the communications of giraffes and elephants, Carpenter noted. The theory is that low-frequency noise travels farther, so creatures in the wild may be able to pick up calls of their own kind at a great distance.
“A Strange tell” is not “credible research” and noone other than you is suggesting there is a value sticking a GPSs transmitter on an elephant or a dog panicking as he hears a tidal wave.
The National Geographic has probability done “strange tales” of spiritual mediums, crop circles, Big Foot, UFOs, and ghosts. I’d get by without all that “credible research”.
With respect to "noone other than (me)is suggesting there is a value sticking a GPSs transmitter on an elephant or a dog panicking as he hears a tidal wave," such was said of most inventions that ended up as being valuable. The little project of the Wright brothers comes to mind, although I would never presume to place myself in their league.
FWIW, I was referring to the use of a small biochip implanted via a large-bore nypodermic needle or small incision into "sentinel" animals. Such recently and amid much controversy has been deployed in humans for the purposes of tracking.
No offense intended or taken, my friend. It's just that I find this topic to be quite fascinating. Apologies if my tone in prior posts was impolite, etc.
I had to dump my year-end vacation due to some time-sensitive projects at work and am exhaustedly dragging my way to taking (I hope) some use-or-lose leave in the near future.
Occasionally posting on the FR is the closest thing I have come to a "vacation" of late. All the best......
Some problems I see with this are that the implants should be limited to non-edible animals to avoid FDA involvement. PETA will want to monitor animal consent, Pat Buchanan will want only AMERICAN animals employed and G Gordon Liddy will eventually want in on all Mexican animals to keep them on their side of the river.
If it’s successful, I’ll need to check for quakes before I go cow tipping else the panic might trigger a tsunami warning here in Key Largo.
Got to go, Take care. I’ll copy you I hear that the French claim they invented it first like the Wright brothers had to contend with.
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