INDEPTH: DISASTER IN ASIA
Tsunami warning
CBC News Online | January 19, 2005
From The National, January 12, 2005
Reporter: Eve Savory
Producer: Jay Bertagnolli
It took a colossal disaster, but the Indian Ocean is finally getting a tsunami warning system, with help from a Canadian scientist.
The world watched the tsunami disaster unfold in horror. As the days went by, incomprehension turned to grief, turned to a collective need to help. But in the scientific community, the reaction was different. There, the apocalyptic destruction caused wasn't a shock. They knew this could happen and they knew the human suffering could be minimized. But with no warning system in place in the region, there was no way to do it. Now one Canadian scientist has a mission, to make sure it never happens again.
In October of 2003, the bare bones of a deep ocean tsunami early warning system went into operation in the Pacific basin. The six buoys and sensors are the latest addition to a sophisticated network of seismic stations, tidal gauges, satellites and scientific centres that will warn Pacific Ocean countries a tsunami is on its way. The Indian Ocean has no warning system.
"At this time in age of 21st century, we cannot allow five million people be displaced, to see more than one million people injured, and 150,000 losing their lives," says Arselin Mahargar, an earth scientist at the University of Toronto.
The technology exists. People were at risk. The combination outrages Mahargar.
"By the time the wave got to Sri Lanka and India, we had about 2½ hours to react and send some warning," he says. "So it shows that our technology is in place, our knowledge is sufficient, but we don't have the policy and procedure to disseminate the information and send the information to the people at risk."
Tad Murty, an Ottawa oceanographer, has also been talking about the need for an Indian Ocean warning system for decades.
Tad Murty
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"Without a warning system, we are always wondering," he says.
Now the political will exists, and policies and procedures will follow. Murty was invited to India to brainstorm with scientists and officials.
Before leaving, he went to Brandon University to consult with colleagues about his presentation.
"The basic purpose of it is what are the steps, not vague ideas, not motherhood statements. Now it is precise exactly what is step one, step two, step three, action items so that the government of India would start. I have absolute confidence that nobody is going to drag their feet now," Murty says.
In the Pacific Ocean, seismic stations note the earthquake location and magnitude. Computer models predict if a tsunami is likely, its size, its energy, its direction, where it might hit and how hard, and all along the coast, tidal gauges pick up the first wave and instantly report it to the network.
Fred Stevenson
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Fred Stevenson of Fisheries and Oceans is Canada's contact for the tsunami warning system.
"It's sort of like a good neighbour policy where the stations closest to the epicentre are the first ones to possibly record the wave and if they record anything, they pass that information back so that it can be relayed on to all the other countries around the world as to whether we have a threat or not," Stevenson says.
The weak link is getting the wave before it hits. That's the job of the new deep ocean tsunameters, pressure sensors anchored to the ocean bottom as deep as six kilometres record the wave, transmit the information to a surface buoy, and from there to a satellite which instantaneously sends the information to warning centres on land. They assess it and contact emergency organizations.
Warning buoy
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"The system in the Pacific, which has existed for 40 years and has been refined and developed over that 40 years, certainly provides a good blueprint for other areas to adopt in their regional warning systems," Stevenson says.
And that's Murty's hope, to use the Pacific as a blueprint to tie together the warning centre, seismic station, tidal gauges and the deep ocean sensors.
"Ultimately, what we need is to look at several dozen sensors at appropriate locations, but we don't really have anything at this time in place in the Indian Ocean," Murty says.
Murty's expertise is in using the computer to model every earthquake scenario and subsequent tsunami. When the earth trembles beneath the ocean, the computer spits out a tsunami's likely direction, speed, destination and height at impact.
Tsunami simulation
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He did a computer simulation with Baird and Associates of Ottawa after the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Murty will meet Prime Minister Paul Martin in India and suggest modelling be Canada's contribution to the Indian Ocean system.
"We can contribute to the brain of the warning system, that is all the computer models. Without that, the warning system doesn't work. That could be our contribution," Murty says.
But there is more to saving lives than a warning system. In 1991, a cyclone lurched towards Bangladesh. The cyclone warning system worked beautifully.
"People did not respond to the warning system," says Emdad Haque of the University of Manitoba. "Why they didn't respond? Because of a number of reasons. They had a fear, they didn't trust the information, and so on. So the assumption that we are making that warning system, placing it will automatically save lives, is not necessarily true particularly in the developing world."
False alarms are a big problem. In 1989, an earthquake was expected to trigger a tsunami on Vancouver Island. Port Alberni was told to pack up and leave for higher ground, but it was a dud.
And unless people are taught about earthquakes and tsunamis and what to do, warnings are useless.
"I would say you should start from the schools, training children at the schools the same way that you train them for fire during drill. You have to train them what to do in the case of disaster," Mahargar says.
As for Canada, geologists have pieced together clues in the sediment and in the dead trees that speak of recurring mega tsunamis bursting out of the ocean right on our doorstep. It will happen again, and for many B.C. communities, the only warning will be the shaking of the earth.
"Education is really critically important. If you feel the earth shaking a sustained period of time, take that as a sign that a tsunami has been generated, or if the water suddenly goes out abnormally far, that's another warning sign that people need to be aware of and take appropriate action," Stevenson says.
Port Alberni, the only B.C. coastal city to have experienced a serious tsunami in 1964, is also the only community with a local warning system.
Alberni warning
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The Atlantic, where tsunamis are almost but not completely unknown, and the Caribbean and the Mediterranean are, like the Indian Ocean, without warning systems. Now while the world is still paying attention is the moment to fix that.
"We need to move immediately on this. We have a lot of good will from all the public, from all the governments. Everybody's focused," Murty says.
"In the Pacific, where we have 26 member states, we need a strong commitment from all of those member states," Stevenson says. "The same challenge will be there for the member states of the Indian Ocean. If it's important to them, they have to support it and they have to be prepared to support it in the long term if it's going to pay benefits down the road."
It is human nature to ignore something that might never happen in our lifetime. Now that it has, the test is this: will the nations affected and those that might yet be have the will to act?
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