I heard a little while ago on the radio, that Thailand was warned about the earthquake which could produce a tsunami heading their way, and they didn't warn anyone because it was the height of the tourist season and they didn't want the hotels to sue them if it was a false alarm.
What do you do if you warn someone and they don't listen---just like some of the people that don't evacuate during a hurricane warning, I guess. You clean up the mess for them anyway, if they survive.
Bush's ranch isn't called the Texas White House for nothing--he has staff with him all the time and is a plugged into world events and the people he needs there, as much as at the White House. I dare say Kofi Annan, whose JOB IT IS TO COORDINATE AID FOR COUNTRIES, didn't have the same set up at the top of a ski slope.
I also heard the same report about Thailand declining to pass on the warning.
Plus, the sheer number of island areas ( did they even have phone service ?) and individual resorts to be contacted, may have made it a physically impossible task, anyway.
I wonder if the UN or Olympia Snowe had ever thought it might be important to educate people in countries bordering large ocean masses, about tsunamis?
It sounds like the majority of people watching the initial outflow of the ocean, viewed it with curiousity, more than fear.
I wonder how many of the villagers would have even understood the concept of a tsunami ?
It sounds like very few people, from the locals to Westerners and Europeans had any idea that when the ocean suddenly washed out, a tsunami was incoming.
I know I didn't.
I've visited Hawaii many times and on the back of the hotel doors and in the phonebooks, they have tsunami evacuation plans- like a tornado warning, a siren will sound and you should go a designated place of higher ground.
I don't recall seeing anything about a receding ocean as a harbinger of a tsunami.
Olympia Snowe and Kofi Annan and the New York Times and Patrick Leahy and the rest of the US Senate have been derelict in educating the world about the warning signs of tsunamis and I think there should be hearings as to why they did not. ( sarcasm off )
Meanwhile, those that actually walk the walk, will be out arranging help for the victims, while the usual suspects will be whining and pointing fingers, on Meet The Press.