[Ken H]

The USGS tried to contact areas but since there was no formal warning network set up by India and Sri Lanka there was no organized way to get a warning out.

I bet people are going to demand that heads roll for that.

[Strategerist]

India has a nuke program. For a tiny fraction of that budget they could easily have set up an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system, with sirens, if they had felt like it.

[StevieB]

There's a blurb on Drudge now that says the last Tsunami in the Indian Ocean was in the 1880's. Considering that this is the part of the world where the major weather concern is the typhoons that kill in the hundred-thousands range, I'm not suprised to see that not much effort has been spent on setting up a system to address a problem that hadn't occurred in several generations.

[johnny7]

These east-asian countries have known about the dangers of a massive tsunami for years. Japan and Hawaii have set up a system for evacuating it's citizens to higher ground.

I heard that they didn't feel that it warranted the cost... and might scare-off tourists.

Just look back to our own Johnstown Flood where greed put off dam improvements to maintain the superb fishing at a resort lake.