core sector communique

World Has Made Progress in Earthquake, Tsunami Warning Since 2004

 

(Indian Ocean tsunami prompted international help for vulnerable regions)  

 

By Cheryl Pellerin

Science Writer

 

Washington ? Five years after the magnitude 9.0 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed 230,000 people and displaced millions, this region and others worldwide ? including the Caribbean, where Haitians are struggling for their lives after the disastrous January 12 temblor ? are better prepared than ever to monitor, detect and respond to natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.

 

With oversight and coordination from the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), and with technical and financial help from many nations, initial seismic and tsunami warning systems are in place and continue to be improved in the Indian Ocean, the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean, and the Caribbean.

 

In the Indian Ocean, many nations have contributed to 73 seismic stations and more than 60 coastal sea-level stations. Australia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States have installed deep-ocean tsunameters   in the region to detect tsunami waves traveling across the ocean. Each nation has a warning center, and Australia, India and Indonesia are providing tsunami watch services for the region. Many nations have implemented community-awareness programs and conducted evacuation drills.

 

With international help, the Northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean region has a seismic monitoring system that now supports an interim tsunami warning system, and the sea level monitoring network is being upgraded to establish a core network of real-time tsunami stations.

 

In the Caribbean, building on the island nations' long experience in dealing with hurricanes, storm surges, volcanic eruptions and mudslides, U.S. technical agencies and other international partners have provided new seismic stations, tide and deep-ocean monitoring devices, and training; national and community disaster plans are being developed.

 

"World seismic networks have continued to improve over time because of general advances in information technology. There are more and more options for getting data from point A to point B around the globe and seismic instrumentation continues to improve," Charles McCreery, director of the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center ( http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/ ) (PTWC) in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, said in a recent interview. "But the tsunami in 2004 caused decision makers to throw more resources at this problem, which has helped."

 

TSUNAMI THREAT

 

At 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning in December 2004, the massive India tectonic plate moved under the Burma plate off the northwest coast of Indonesia's island of Sumatra in a process called subduction, lifting the ocean floor by several meters. Half an hour later, the first of a series of giant tsunami waves ( http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/Mov/TITOV-INDO2004.mov ) hit the coast of northern Sumatra, then later Thailand, Sri Lanka and other countries ringing the Indian Ocean.

 

On that day, only the United States and Japan had tsunami early warning systems and these covered the Pacific Ocean, where 85 percent of tsunamis historically occur, according to the International Tsunami Information Centre. But earthquakes, undersea landslides and explosions can generate tsunamis in all of the world's oceans, inland seas and large bodies of water.

 

Just over five years later, late on a Tuesday afternoon near Port-au-Prince, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake caused shaking that was felt throughout Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeastern Cuba, eastern Jamaica, parts of Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and as far away as Tampa, Florida, and Caracas, Venezuela.

 

"Only 10 minutes after the earthquake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was able to issue a tsunami watch for Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic," Bernardo Aliaga, technical secretary for UNESCO's Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Caribbean Tsunami Warning System, said in a January 26 interview.

 

"People in the Meteorological Department in the Dominican Republic got the warning in 10 minutes," he added. "They communicated with the Cabinet, the prime minister's office, and they were able to get the news to the television within 20 to 25 minutes to make people [in the Dominican Republic] aware of what was going on with respect to the possibility or not of a tsunami. In the case of Haiti there was no time for anything."

 

One minute and 32 seconds after issuing an initial tsunami watch, the PTWC in Hawaii, part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, cancelled the watch.

 

A tsunami measuring 12 centimeters from wave crest to trough was recorded at Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and a tsunami of less than 1 centimeter was recorded on a deep-ocean tsunameter in the east-central Caribbean. There could have been destructive tsunami waves near the earthquake epicenter, the PTWC tsunami message read, "but there is not a threat to coastal areas further away."