Tsunami warning system didn't work in time

Washington Times ^ | 10/1/2009 | Audrey Hudson

[Saije]

An early warning system introduced after the disastrous Christmas 2004 tsunami worked as planned, U.S. officials say, but failed to prevent the deaths of more than 100 people in Samoa and American Samoa on Tuesday because of the proximity of the originating earthquake.

It was the first practical test of the system, set up in response to the 2004 wave that killed more than 220,000 people in the Indian Ocean region, primarily in Indonesia.

Officials scrambled after an 8.0-magnitude earthquake shook just before dawn Tuesday, and after a flurry of phone calls within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Island offices, the first warning was issued within 16 minutes, said NOAA spokeswoman Delores Clark. She said that was well within the agency's range of 10 to 20 minutes for an acceptable warning.

But because the quake was so close to American Samoa, it was just four minutes after the warning that a series of two-story-high waves crashed over low-lying villages and heavily damaged the capital city of Pago Pago.

Samoa's Deputy Prime Minister Misa Telefoni told Australia's AAP news agency that the event happened so quickly there was little time to get out of harm's way.

"The difficulty is that it now appears that the [earthquake] fault was very, very close to us and we only had minutes rather than hours to respond," Mr. Telefoni said...

Mrs. Clark said the earthquake hit at 6:48 a.m. local time, and the Hawaii office issued its first warning at 7:04 a.m., 16 minutes later. She said the tsunami hit roughly 20 minutes after the earthquake, or four minutes after the official warning.

Mrs. Clark said the center's computers ... constantly monitor seismic data for earthquakes, then look at water levels to determine whether to send out tsunami warnings or watches.

[Saije]

Sometimes there's just nothing anyone can do. It's like the hurricane warnings where the path looks like it's going in one direction and then veers off closer to shore and hits a different part of land. Just nothing anyone can do.

[Ciexyz]

Very tragic situation.

[Jack Hammer]

Object lesson in Murphy’s Law: if you spend a fortune on a tsunami watch system, the tsunami will strike someplace else.

[Publius6961]

What was the brief, accurate assessment of this sort of thing from a few years ago?

"The good in pursuit of the perfect?"

It surfaced, I think, during the "Star Wars" debate. In that case, if it could "only" be 80% effective, it was not worth having.

There is no human endeavor which is ever perfect. Fact.
There will always be small and truly imperfect (and I believe) evil people at all levels of society who will always, after the fact, criticize that inevitable imperfection, and be smug, superior and demagoguic about it. Also fact.

[WVKayaker]

“Stuff” happens...

[CharlesWayneCT]

This is another story that cites 2-story-tall waves, but other stories have said the waves were no more than 6 feet or so.

Still, if you live on the coast, and you just were shook by a 5-minute quake, you should probably leave the coast without waiting for the tsunami warning.