An evacuation in Hawaii could cost as much as $68 million in lost productivity, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Since the 1960's, Dr. Kong said, there have been two warnings of tsunamis in Hawaii that ended in evacuations, and both were false alarms..."
At last here is rational discussion about the realities of tsunami prediction.
This is also an article which lays no blame on the affected countries, nor on the United States for those countries' lack of foresight, premonition or awareness of the unexpected catastrophe which would move them from the low risk to the high risk category for destructive tsunamis.
Ping.
ping
Earlier I was thinking about the cost of installing and maintaining the actual final warning system, certainly some sort of siren system. Figure a 150 dB siren every mile of coast, $20,000 per unit, backup diesel generators, $10,000 per unit, multiply by what, 10,000 miles of coastline? Three hundred million dollars? About $60,000,000 a year in maintenance? Want to bet the maintenance would never get done?
It has been known for some time now that animals are extremely sensitive to events leading up to earthquakes and the earthquakes themselves.
Indeed, the entire world now marvels at reports that no animals perished in the during the recent devasting tsunami.
All that would be needed for an effective worldwide warning system would be based on small GPS tracking chips (recently developed and already variously deployed) implanted into thousands of wild and domestic animals that could be tracked by a computerized pattern recognition system.
When a sudden mass migration or other unusual pattern of movement of said animals is detected by the system, voile' -- it's time for humans to evacuate buildings and coastal areas and for ships at sea to prepare for tsunamis.
BTW, it would really suck if one of our aircraft carrier groups or even an oil tanker were ever wiped slick by an unexpected tsunami.
Further studies of animals' detection and migration in response to various seismic events would serve to fine-tune and increase the sensitivity, specificity, and overall reliability of such a system.
As long as our "experts" and "leaders" continue exhibit an ability to think "outside the box" that is less than that of many FReepers, the peoples of the world will continue to be sitting ducks as they were last week in around the Indian Ocean basin and beyond.
Sheesh. Do we have to tell them everything? Perhaps a government functionary trolling this forum could occasionally pick up a great idea or two from the Free Republic and become a hero by filching it for the common good. More power to him/her -- I would watch with a $#!t-eating grin the ceremony at which said troll received a major award for science in the public interest and would not bore anyone by claiming I had been "robbed."
The only scoreboard I'm concerned with is maintained by our Heavenly Father, who has blessed many with the grey matter necessary to bring to pass much good for the benefit of His children here on earth.....
ping
For just the “maintenance cost of $50,000” per year they could hire 3 sharp 3rd world guys at a PC watching the news wire for earthquakes. They then make a quick line of site judgment call of the wake probability and sound the alarm. No underwater pressure sensors (that are unable to tell the difference between a 4 and 40’ wave) needed.
Using the Hawaiian tsunami alarm system as an example: What if there was a tsunami approaching Hawaii, a tsunami alert was issued by the appropriate Hawaiian authorities and still people died? Then what caused these peoples to die? It wasn't presence or absence of a tsunami alarm system - it was the freakin' tsunami.
Japan has a wide-spread tsunami alarm system with a population who is very educated on how it functions, yet Japanese people still die in tsunami.
7/12/1993 - "The Hokkaido-Nansei-Oki earthquake on July 12 produced one of the largest tsunamis in Japan's history. At 2217 local time (1317 UTC), the Ms-7.8 quake rocked the west coast of Hokkaido and the small, offshore island of Okushiri in the Sea of Japan, generating a major tsunami. Within 2-5 minutes, extremely large waves engulfed the Okushiri coastline and the central west coast of Hokkaido....As of July 21, 185 fatalities were confirmed, with 120 attributed to the tsunami."
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tsunami/okushiri_devastation.html
Experts fend off accusations tsunami warning was too slow
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050101/TSWARNING01/TPInternational/Americas
By PAUL KORING
Saturday, January 1, 2005 - Page A11
A widely published initial response from Charles McCreery, the geophysicist in charge of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, didn't help. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world," he said two days after the epic disaster, suggesting that a lack of telephone numbers prevented a timely warning reaching the threatened coasts.
In fact, the rarity of catastrophic tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and the absence of an appropriate international detection system, rather than any sluggishness at the U.S. centre in Hawaii, made a timely warning impossible, according to outside experts.
The magnitude of the earthquake is crucial. Anything less than 9.0 is unlikely to produce tsunamis capable of devastating coastlines and causing widespread casualties and damage, said Brian Atwater, a U.S. Geological Survey expert in major earthquakes and tsunamis.
In the crucial hour after the massive undersea shift off Sumatra at 00:59 Greenwich Mean Time on Sunday, the watch keepers at the Pacific warning centre believed they were dealing with a magnitude 8.0 quake -- 10 times less powerful. Within minutes of receiving the first seismic data, eight minutes after the earthquake, it issued its first bulletin.
By then, the massive tsunamis were already pounding the Sumatra coast.
The centre, with its web of buoys in the Pacific Ocean, has no direct means of detecting tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.
"We have no eyes or ears in the Indian Ocean," Scott Smullen, a NOAA spokesman, said yesterday. "Our people did everything they could do with very little information."
Even with a state-of-the-art tsunami detection system such as the one that exists in the Pacific, where 90 per cent of tsunamis occur, getting warnings out in time to save lives on a nearby coast is impossible.
"It wouldn't have made any difference in Sumatra," where the worst of the death and destruction occurred, said Jim Whyte, manager of operations for Provincial Emergency Programs in British Columbia.
[Snip]
But while the tsunamis struck Sumatra within minutes, and the Thai coast in less than an hour, it was about two hours before they raced across the Indian Ocean and slammed into Sri Lanka and India.
Nations bordering the Indian Ocean haven't established a warning and detection system. The last significant tsunami in the Indian Ocean, one of the largest on record, killed an estimated 30,000 people after the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883.
Last weekend, U.S. and Japanese experts worked frantically trying to figure out where and when a tsunami might strike, depending on the size of the offshore quake and imperfect models of the Indian Ocean seabed.
Not until an hour after the earthquake did seismic data reach the tsunami centre, indicating an 8.5 magnitude. That prompted a second advisory, flashed to all 26 Pacific Rim countries, including Indonesia and Australia.
It warned of a possible tsunami near the epicentre and said there was no risk of a Pacific tsunami.
Working frantically and independently on opposite sides of the Pacific, two of the world's foremost tsunami experts attempted to build computer models of what might be happening in the Indian Ocean.
[Snip]
Sounding the Alarm on a Tsunami Is Complex and Expensive
Tell that to those who perished, and those who survived. I wonder what they will think about the price. Once the initial shock has worn off, the people should string up their gov't leaders.