Tsunami and our secret base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean

The island of Diego Garcia has a US base that is more secret than Area 51. Diego Garcia has its own version of Guantamo's concentration camp, a black hole where prisoners disappear from our universe. Diego Garcia was on the path of the tsunami, yet little has been heard about its effect on the island.

Diego Garcia
"Camp Justice"
7°20'S 72°25'E

Initial indications are that Diego Garcia was not affected by the Andaman Tsunami of 26 December 2004. It is located south of the tip of India, well with in range of what the tsunami, with a max elevation of 22 and an average elevation of only 4 feet. Civilians monitoring shortwave radio reported on rec.radio.shortwave that a female operator, in answer to a query from an aircraft after giving weather information, reported no ill effects from the earthquake.

Officials said the Diego Garcia Navy Support Facility, which houses about 1,700 military personnel and 1,500 civilian contractors, suffered no damage related to the earthquake and ensuing tsunamis. Personnel at the facility reported no unusual activity or problems over the weekend. Diego Garcia, the southernmost island in the Chagos Archipelago, sits about 1,000 miles south of India and roughly 2,000 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter. Even though an earthquake like Sunday’s will radiate destructive waves in all directions, the damage caused by the water differs greatly depending on the undersea topography.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/diego-garcia.htm

so maybe they had time to get to higher ground?

Nice of the US to let these guys know and not tell anyone else.

yet these are the same people that failed to warn Indonesia, Thailand, and India of the potential for a tsunami.

I'm all for hating Bush, but reaching down the ladder to slime the workaday nerds of the USGS is too much.

There's no system set up in the Indian Ocean, and it's hard for them to invent one on the fly in a couple on a weekend. Consider this -- the tsunami hit Thailand and was public knowledge for two hours before it hit Sri Lanka. In fact, the earthquake itself was on major news websites before the tsunami materialized. What good did that do?

Blaming a bunch of geologists for this tragedy is too far out, in my view.

Another fact: A spokesperson for the Pacific Tsunamic Warning Center said on CNN that they couldn't warn any of the affected countries because they knew of no one that they could call on the phone that would find them credible.

But Diego Garcia is an American base. Is Sri Lanka?

I'm not going to stand with you while you take a piss over a bunch of civil servants.

As to your other fact, isn't that just restating what's been said? There was no system in place. Countries in the western Indian Ocean had two hours warning after the news was already in the press. There was nobody for the USGS to reach that the press couldn't.

Diego Garcia is a navy base. YOu can even google it. They have a propaganda website with photos even. That's old news. This island has been used by the navy for a long time. Since the wars, they've been using it for all kinds of different things including torture. It just hasnt been reported because it's a private island. And as far as the tsunami goes. Diego Garcia was warned by the Pacific Tsunami. If you want to learn a whole lot about the whole situation, I'd suggest this link...

Foreknowledge of A Natural Disaster:
Washington was aware that a deadly Tidal Wave was building up in the Indian Ocean

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/412A.html

that Diego Garcia is an American base and was warned?

Where?

The "warning" radar or alarm that you've been hearing reported is incorrect. Hawaii had 3-8 hours to forewarn all these countries. India, Thailand, Africa,etc. But they didnt. ALl they had to do was phone, email, broaddcast, etc. Go to the link...



http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO412C.html

because you said I denied there was a US base that was warned on Diego Garcia, which I didn't.

I know there were several hours between the time of the quake and the time it hit -- because I READ IT ON THE INTERNET IN THAT TIMEFRAME!

For people to come out and practically accuse a bunch of geologists of murder because they couldn't figure out who to contact in Sri Lanka or India on a Sunday morning is disgusting.

I've read that the US did try to warn people, but they miscalculated the earthquake as an 8.0 not a 9.0 and that didn't help either.

Bottom line: There was no warning system to spread a warning through anyway. Except to Diego Garcia.

So it's a mix of factors.

You call every number in your address book, but most of them go to voicemail,
which wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
but does not inspire confidence on when the message will be heard.
You find a Thai phone directory on the net, oops, it's only in Thai.
So is the directory assistance operator you reach.

You are, after all, in the *Pacific* warning center, so you can
warn Japan, the US, the Phillipines, Chile, etc., but all these
countries along the Indian Ocean would not have contact information,
and would not likely have any staff on duty during the holidays
for something they didn't perceive as a serious risk anyway.

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/itic/
"One of the few places in the Indian Ocean that got the message of the quake was Diego Garcia, a speck of an island with a United States Navy base, because the Pacific warning center's contact list includes the Navy. Finding the appropriate people in Sri Lanka or India was harder." (NYT, 28 Dec 2004, emphasis added)

Now how hard is it to pick up the phone and call Sri Lanka?

With modern communications, the information of an impending disaster could have been sent around the World in a matter of minutes, by email, by telephone, by fax, not to mention by live satellite Television.

Coastguards, municipalities, local governments, tourist hotels, etc. could have been warned.

According to Tsunami Society President Prof. Tad Murty of the University of Manitoba:

'there's no reason for a single individual to get killed in a tsunami,' since most areas had anywhere from 25 minutes to four hours before a wave hit. So, once again, because of indifference and corruption thousands of innocent people have died needlessly." (Calgary Sun, 28 Dec 2004)

Why were the Indian Ocean countries' governments not informed?

Were there "guidelines" from the US military or the State Department regarding the release of an advanced warning?

According to the statement of the Hawaii based PTWC, advanced warning was released but on a selective basis. Indonesia was already hit, so the warning was in any event redundant and Australia was several thousand miles from the epicentre of the earthquake and was, therefore, under no immediate threat.

The Tsunami Timeline

Sunday 26 December 2004 (GMT)

00.57 GMT: Between 00.57 GMT and 00.59 GMT, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake occurs on the seafloor near Aceh in northern Indonesia. (See http://ioc.unesco.org/itsu/ and other reports)

00.58 GMT: Saturday 25 December, 2.58 pm Hawaii Time (GMT-10) 26 Dec 00.58 GMT. US government's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center registers the earthquake on its seismic instruments. In other words at the time of its occurrence at 00.58 GMT.

shortly after 01.00 GMT: Earthquake hits several cities in Indonesia, creates panic in urban areas in peninsular Malaysia. The news of the earthquakes is reported immediately.

01.3O GMT: Phuket and Coast of Thailand: The tidal wave hits to coastline shortly after 8.30 am, 01.30 GMT

02.30 GMT: Colombo Sri Lanka and Eastern Coast of Sri Lanka, the tidal wave hits the coastal regions close to the capital Colombo, according to report at 8.30 am local time, 02.30 GMT (an hour and a half after the earthquake)

02.45 GMT: India's Eastern Coastline. The tsunami hits India's eastern coast from 6:15 a.m.(2:45 GMT)

04.00 GMT: Male, Maldives: From about 9:00 am (0400 GMT), three hours after the earthquake, the capital, Male, and other parts of the country were flooded by the tsunami. (more than three hours after the earthquake)

11.00 GMT (approximate time according to news dispatches): East Coast of Africa is hit. More than ten hours after the earthquake


http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO412C.html

With no system? Within two hours?

Yes, it is that hard.

Call who? Seriously, what's the phone number for Sri Lanka? I'm not joking. Since you seem to think this is so damn easy, I suggest you give it a try. You're probably about as qualified to do this as most normal folks at NOAA or USGS (who know how to warn FEMA and state governments, mostly.) How long do you think it would take for NOAA or USGS to actually get through to someone in the US (on Christmas or the day after) who would have pull with the Sri Lanka government, or even how to contact them at all? How would you even know who that person is? Now take that effort and multiply it out over five or six or even ten countries. This is the monumental effort that is supposed to be averted by having (yes, you guessed it) an early warning system in place. The Indian Ocean countries ignored this threat for a long time. It doesn't take anything more than a first-year geology student to tell you that this was likely to happen along that fault.
I find your 20/20 hindsight with respect to our underfunded geological and atmospheric agencies to be a bit silly.

...none of this absolves the Indian Ocean countries of their responsibility in this tragedy, for they knew the risk (or should have known - they have geologists in those countries, too) and did nothing about it. Why does the US have a larger responsibility than those countries which had no system in place? If those countries had taken the relatively easy and inexpensive steps of putting a warning system in place, then we wouldn't need to be here having this ridiculous argument today. Their failure to acknowlege the risk and take steps to abate it is the real scandal of this whole thing. Bottom line - they knew there was a risk, and did nothing to prepare.

Been there. Seen it. Reminds me of Midway because it's so flat. But it does have a dandy lagoon that Midway lacks.

Concerning the warning: I heard it on the news, than googled away. According to the sources I could find, most nations with IO coastline do not have warning systems in place for tsunamis - or much of anything else. It appears that the local governments don't (or at least didn't) feel the cost was justified.

the other countries was that the emergency system in the pacific had no phone numbers of any emergency agency in the indian ocean. there are also rumors that the officials in some countries were warned about the lack of emergency plans and early warning networks but thought it wasn`t necessary and it would scare the tourists.

is indeed a shameful one- we (Britain and the U.S.) dispossessed the residents with very little compensation. And compensation isn't what they want anyway. They want their home back. However, as I understand it, Diego Garcia wasn't touched by the tsunami, due to it's location on the edge of a very deep trench. Someone in this thread mentioned a warning they may have received enabling them to reach higher ground. Again, as I understand it, there is no higher ground on the Island and the tsunami did not hit it.

It's common knowledge that the US has a base on Diego Garcia

DIEGO GARCIA NAVY BASE INDIAN OCEAN





Once again, take 5 minutes and go to this link...

Foreknowledge of a Natural Disaster

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO412C.html