NYT,pg1: How Scientists and Victims Watched Helplessly

How Scientists and Victims Watched Helplessly

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: December 31, 2004


....For those on the shores of the affected countries, the reckoning with the tsunami's power came all but out of the blue, and cost them their lives. It began near a corner of the island of Sumatra, and ended 3,000 miles away on the East African shore.

For the scientists in Hawaii, at the planet's main tsunami center, who managed to send out one of the rare formal warnings, there was intense frustration. They had useful information; they were trained to get word out; but they were stymied by limitations, including a lack of telephone numbers for counterparts in other countries.

For Colleen McGinn, a disaster relief worker in Melbourne, Australia, the developing crisis would send her off on an aid mission that she could not have comprehended and that United Nations officials have projected to be the greatest relief effort ever mounted.

For others like Phil Cummins, an Australian seismologist, what was happening made all too much sense. He had grasped the dangers a year earlier, and in 2004 had delivered a Powerpoint presentation to tsunami experts in Japan and Hawaii.

"It really seems strange now to see the title," Dr. Cummins recalled yesterday. "Tsunami in the Indian Ocean - Why should we care?"...


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/international/worldspecial4/31wave.html?oref=login

Where will people go if they are warned? How will the warning get to the beachgoers before it it too late?

this is essentially a republishing - with different characters - of a story that was discussed here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1104345#1104414