|
SYSTEMIC
FAILURE:
Did
our satellite system image the tsunami? ISRO officials here took a defensive
posture by evading this crucial question. 2.
ISRO saw the killer wave, but chose to remain silent, The New Indian Express
dated 28/12/04
3. 26 nations knew of threat in 15 min, India not one of them, The New
Indian Express dated 28/12/04. World’s Tsunami expert, Indian Tad
Murty says: I tried several times but government says they have no money.
4. Was it a human failure?, Business Line dated 29/12/04 5.
Government knew one hour before waves struck, The New Indian Express dated
30/12/04 6.
`An error of judgment in reporting quake', Deccan Herald dated 31/12/04
7. Tragic intelligence failure, Deccan Herald dated 31/12/04 The 9/11 intelligence failure has been discussed to death. The world community now has to grapple with a gigantic intelligence failure —the failure of common intelligence that could have saved thousands of lives in the Indian Ocean rim nations. Weather knows no national boundaries but America’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre recorded the powerful undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean and announced that “there was no threat of tsunami to the US area of responsibility”. Had some Indian or Indonesian been sitting in front of the computer in the control room, he might have seen the horrendous measurements differently! 8. Confusion between ministries exposes lack of coordination at Centre, New Indian Express dated 31/12/04 The lack of coordination between the Union Home Ministry and Ministry of Ocean Development over handling the post tsunami situation was fully exposed when the Ocean Development Minister Kapil Sibal contradicted the high alert issued by the Home Ministry saying it was "unscientific" 9. Confusion in Delhi, panic on coastline, Deccan Herald dated 31/12/04 Warning of a possible tsunami strike generated panic, with people grabbing their belongings and rushing to safer ground in Tamil Nadu and the Andamans. 10.
The tsunami test — Are `reserves' really `resources'?, Business
Line dated 1/1/05
12. Amid grief, India asks: 'Why weren't we warned?' , The New Indian Express dated 2/1/05 For two and a half hours the tsunami sped towards the Indian coast, yet nobody was warned.
Officials in the IMD and Department of Science and Technology are busy pointing fingers at each other over the failure to issue a timely warning. 14. Meteorological office takes a cue from its tsunami failure, The New Indian Express dated 4/1/05 In spite of a lead time of almost six hours, no early warning could be issued before tidal surges lashed our coasts. The main reason, top officials admit, was the absence of a system to translate common knowledge into scientific information. And this happened only because we had no idea about this new phenomenon called tsunami. 15. A phone call saves a village from tsunami disaster, The New Indian Express dated 4/1/05 When the catastrophic tsunami raged across the southeastern coast of the country destroying thousands of lives, a little village near Pondicherry escaped its wrath thanks to a timely warning call from Singapore. 16. India sought tidal monitoring system in March: US, The New Indian Express dated 5/1/05 We have to establish modalities of how to gather data and avail of it in real time, which is a major challenge in India. There was no follow-up of the 2004 proposal, but I hope the tsunami disaster will accelerate the process. 17. Training course helped save lives, The New Indian Express dated 13/1/05 Teams
such as village panchayat, rescue and replacement, transit shelter, sanitation
and fist aid, relief team, loss assessment and entertainment team were
formed in the coastal hamlet. 18.
The politics of a ‘national calamity’. 19.
Government pays for taking India out of the Indian Ocean, The New Indian
Express dated 30/12/04. 18.
‘Tsunami’ Murthy finally gets a call from Delhi: Show us your
blueprint, The New Indian Express dated 18/1/05 19. Advanced tsunami system and still improving, Japanese expert tells how, The New Indian Express dated 22/1/05. On January 19, a tsunami warning was issued by the Japan Met Agency after a quake of 6.5 was recorded off Japan's eastern coast. The warning was cancelled as the waves posed no danger. But it took the agency just two minutes to convey the message to the residents in the area. top Though ISRO’s weather satellites could not have imaged the tsunami’s early phases, they must have recorded the later surface manifestations and could have alerted the nation, at least in time before the powerful waves struck the Indian coast. Did our satellite system image the tsunami? ISRO officials here took a defensive posture by evading this crucial question. But according to a scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity, ‘‘Our satellite system is capable of imaging a tsunami as it becomes manifest on the ocean surface, though not at its origin.’’ Many space scientists believe that there could have been some ‘‘harbinger’’ indications of the tsunami. Tsunamis, caused by seabed disturbances, initially travel like undercurrents, making it difficult for satellite imaging in their early phases. But as the undercurrent approaches shallower regions, the waves appear on the surface, satellite images of which, had they reached the IMD, could have generated an alert at least an hour before the disaster struck the coastline. IMD officials in the City pointed out that though ISRO satellites generate real-time images, the Department’s central office in Delhi depends entirely on the space agency for timely access to this data. ‘‘The Meteosat – Kalpana, which was launched in 2003 – and Insat-3A are the satellites which are deployed for meteorological applications. We normally receive, via IMD Delhi, real-time data on cyclones, low pressure areas and cloud storms. The IMD centres in the country can only forward the prediction and forecast received from Delhi,’’ explained the Director of IMD Bangalore, Dr. Anand Koppar. Another expert rued the lack of a definitive technology to predict earthquakes. ‘‘Such cases involve displacement of thousands of people at a short notice. We cannot evacuate people based on a forecast that is not 100 percent reliable.’’ he said. A tsunami travels at a speed proportional to the depth of the sea. In deeper regions, it is faster but the amplitude is lower. A huge mass of water at high speed gains enormous kinetic energy. As it nears shallow waters the speed decreases and hence the amplitude increases to dissipate its energy. As a result, cascades of huge walls of water slam the coast. 2. ISRO saw the killer wave, but chose to remain silent, The New Indian Express dated 28/12/04 BANGALORE: A day after the killer tsunami cut a swathe of destruction on the country's eastern seaboard, questions have been raised over whether the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) could have done more to alert the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), the nodal agency for issuing weather alerts, and perhaps save hundreds of lives. Though ISRO's weather satellites could not have imaged the tsunami's early phases, they must have recorded the later surface manifestations and could have alerted the nation, at least in time before the powerful waves struck the Indian coast. Did our satellite system image the tsunami? ISRO officials here took a defensive posture by evading this crucial question. But according to a scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity, ``Our satellite system is capable of imaging a tsunami as it becomes manifest on the ocean surface, though not at its origin.'' Many space scientists believe that there could have been some ``harbinger'' indications of the tsunami. Tsunamis, caused by seabed disturbances, initially travel like undercurrents, making it difficult for satellite imaging in their early phases. But as the undercurrent approaches shallower regions, the waves appear on the surface, satellite images of which, had they reached the IMD, could have generated an alert at least an hour before the disaster struck the coastline. IMD officials in the City pointed out that though ISRO satellites generate real-time images, the Department's central office in Delhi depends entirely on the space agency for timely access to this data. ``The Meteosat - Kalpana, which was launched in 2003 - and Insat-3A are the satellites which are deployed for meteorological applications. We normally receive, via IMD Delhi, real-time data on cyclones, low pressure areas and cloud storms. The IMD centres in the country can only forward the prediction and forecast received from Delhi,'' explained the Director of IMD Bangalore, Dr. Anand Koppar. Another expert rued the lack of a definitive technology to predict earthquakes. ``Such cases involve displacement of thousands of people at a short notice. We cannot evacuate people based on a forecast that is not 100 percent reliable.'' he said. TSUNAMI DYNAMICS A tsunami travels at a speed proportional to the depth of the sea. At deeper regions, it travels faster but the amplitude is lower. A huge mass of water at a high speed gains enormous kinetic energy. As it nears shallow waters the speed decreases and hence the amplitude increases to dissipate its energy. As a result, cascades of huge walls of water slam the coast. 3.
26 nations knew of tsunami threat within 15 min, India not one of them,
The New Indian Express dated 28/12/04 This tsunami warning stated, ``Revised magnitude based on analysis of mantle waves (8.5). This earthquake is located outside the Pacific. No destructive tsunami threat exists for the pacific basin based on historical and tsunami data... There is the possibility of a tsunami near the epicentre.'' The last part of this warning was crucial to India, as it was this very ``possible tsunami'' that ravaged the east coast of the country killing thousands. But such was the level of ignorance about the oncoming tsunami here, that officials at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) - the premier institute in its field in the country - got to know about it only after it had hit the east coast. Said Satish R Shetye, director of NIO, speaking to this website’s newspaper in Dona Paula, said, ``I got to know about the tsunami at around 10 am on Sunday, when crew on board the NIO research ship Sagar Sukti, which was anchored off the coast of Visakhapatnam, called me to say they had been told to move offshore. I was completely taken by surprise.'' The irony could not have been sharper. One of the people who helped set up the Pacific Tsunami Warning System and the Canadian Tsunami Warning System three decades ago was a Canada-based Indian, Tad Murty. Now attached to the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Murty says key equipment and computer models could have helped save thousands in southeast Asia on Sunday. He has personally taken up the issue of setting up a 24-hour tsunami warning system with the Indian government. “I have tried several times with the Indian government, but they have said they do not have enough money to sustain a full-fledged system,'' Murty said from Manitoba, ``It is largely seen as a Pacific country problem.'' Murty's ``full-fledged system'' requires a seismograph, tide gauges and computer models. ``It will be difficult for India to do it alone. They should get together with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Thailand, and come under the umbrella of the UN to set up this round-the-clock warning system,'' says Murty. Immediately after an earthquake, computer models can calculate how fast the waves will travel, as well as their amplitude. Murty has developed computer models for the Indian Ocean on his own initiative. The lack of these is exactly what has the Indian Seismological Central Receiving Station complaining. According to Murty, in spite of speeds of 400-500 miles per hour, it is possible to make warnings practicable. The Indian Met Office has its own explanations. ``Unless we have computer models, we cannot issue a tsunami warning after every earthquake,'' says R S Dattatrayam, director (seismology), Indian Meteorological Department. Every major earthquake in the ocean does not result in a tsunami. There was a major earthquake on June 26, 1941, of a magnitude of 8.1 off the coast of the Andamans. But it did not result in any tsunamis, Dattatrayam says, ``It is a question of science. We cannot issue a warning causing panic, unless we can establish it scientifically.'' But the need for a permanent warning establishment has been voiced earlier: ``With population increasing on the coasts, these systems should have been set up long time ago,'' says Murty, ``anything more than an earthquake of 6.5 on the Richter scale can trigger a tsunami.'' As recently as June 2004, a meeting of the Inter-Governmental Oceanographers' Commission, a UN expert body, concluded, ``The Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis.'' In Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre was set up in 1965 and has almost mastered the art of forecasting the destructive waves. These countries receive specific early warnings with exhaustive data on tsunamis and can bank on an extensive network of seismic stations to locate potentially tsunamigenic earthquakes in near real-time. The system is connected via satellite and telephone to nearly 100 water level stations throughout the Pacific that can be used to verify the generation and possible severity of a tsunami. India will have to start from scratch. 4.
Was it a human failure?, Business Line dated 29/12/04 4.
Centre got wind of earthquake 1 hour before it struck Chennai coast, The
New Indian Express, dated 30/12/04 But it was only 41 minutes later - during which time the waves were heading west - that the first communique went out from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) to the Government. And the Crisis Management Group, the Government's nodal emergency response unit, met at 1 pm by when the tusnami had come, killed and gone. And guess who got this first IMD communique? It was sent at 8.54 am to the residence of Murli Manohar Joshi, former Science and Technology Minister rather than his successor Kapil Sibal. It's always easier to find faults with the benefit of hindsight - especially in an unprecedented disaster like this one - but an investigation of the sequence of events after the quake hit Sumatra at 6.29 am shows a glaring disconnect between different agencies of the Government. And highlights how precious time - that could have been used to issue warnings and maybe save some lives - was lost. Consider the sequence of events: * ``At 7.30 am, we were informed by our Chennai unit that coordinates the logistics for the Car Nicobar base about a massive earthquake near Andamans and Nicobar,'' Air Chief S Krishnaswamy told this website’s newspaper on Wednesday. ``But communication links went down in the Island Territories, the Chennai unit could only raise Car Nicobar base on the high frequency set at 7.50 am ... the last message from Car Nicobar base was that the island is sinking and there is water all over.'' * At 8.15 am, the Air Chief says, he asked his Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operations) to alert the Defence Ministry. Now cut to the civilian establishment. * Unaware of its fax goof-up, the IMD, as per routine, sent another fax to the Disaster Control Room in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) at 9.14 am. * Eight minutes later, Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi's private secretary was also brought into the loop. * At 10.30, the director of the Control Room T. Swami informed Cabinet Secretariat officials. * By then the tsunami had hit the Chennai coastline and another earthquake measuring 7.3 struck 60 miles west of Indira Point at 9.53 am. What happened between 6.29 am and 8.56 am in the IMD is also telling: it shows how the country's premier met agency works in isolation during an unprecedented emergency. So even as IMD stations in Chennai, Vishakhapatnam and Kolkata began started receiving after-shock signals within minutes of the main earthquake, and while the rest of the world had already issued the exact epicentre of the earthquake - and the Pacific warning system had sounded a tidal wave alert - the IMD was doing its own calculations to find out the magnitude and epicentre of the earthqake. Not helping the IMD was the fact that the Andaman station in Port Blair runs on an old, analog system rather than a digital one. In other words, in the event of a large earthquake and frequent after-shocks, what it registered was a ``clipped seismograph'' - a blank sheet of paper instead of zig-zag lines. This is exactly what happened. ``For computing the exact epicentre, we need data from three stations in three directions. With Andamans out of operations, it took us longer than expected,'' explained the duty officer. By then, the after-shocks had begun at Andamans. The first one was at 7:19 am of magnitude 5.9 on the richter scale. It is not clear whether that was enough to sound the warning bells. ``Tsunamis are never recorded in Indian history, so it did not occur to us,'' said R S Dattatrayam, director seismology at IMD, who arrived after 8.30 am to the station after being informed. ``I don't recall the exact sequence of events.'' 5.
`An error of judgment in reporting quake', Deccan Herald dated 31/12/04
A Republican senator has expressed the need for a probe into the alleged failure of the US government in warning the countries hit by tsunami. BY
L K SHARMA If
nature had struck after the Christmas holidays, the toll would have been
slightly less. The underwater earthquake did not go unnoticed by the vast
array of instruments deployed by the Vienna-based Test Ban Treat Organisation,
mandated to detect nuclear explosions. However, its offices were closed
for the holidays! The warning centre is run by NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Its second bulletin issued on December 26 revising the magnitude of the earthquake said: “This message is for information only. There is no tsunami warning or watch in effect.” It goes on to give the preliminary parameters of the earthquake before coming to its evaluation: “This earthquake is located outside the Pacific. No destructive tsumani threat exists for the Pacific Basin based on historical earthquake and tsumani data. There is the possibility of a tsunami near the epicentre.” A subsequent bulletin even noted that some energy from the Indian Ocean tsumani leaked into the Pacific Basin. It was still I’m-Ok kind of message because in the Pacific, this leaked energy produced only minor sea level fluctuations. NOAA warning At least one Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe, feels troubled and has raised the possibility a Congressional investigation into the alleged failure of the US government. Countries such as India, Sri Lanka and Maldives have no claims on the NOAA warning bulletins since they are part of the Pacific network. The scientific community will be divided. Some may defend NOAA by saying that not all earthquakes lead to tsunamis. You can have large earthquakes and no tsunamis or small earthquakes and big tsunamis. Rocked by criticism, NOAA has already revised its initial official statement. The earlier one said that a few hours after learning of the tsunamis, a NOAA laboratory with Japanese scientists had created preliminary model estimates of the events. A subsequent NOAA statement inserted the following: After detecting that there was no tsunami threat to the US area of responsibility, “NOAA scientists then began an effort to notify countries about the possibility that a tsunami may have been triggered by the massive 9.0 undersea earthquake. The Pacific Basin tsumani warning system did not detect a tsunami in the Indian Ocean since there are no buoys in place there.” It claims: “Even without a way to detect whether a tsunami had formed in the Indian Ocean, NOAA officials tried to get the message out to other nations not a part of its Pacific warning system to alert them of the possibility of a tsunami. (Was the Director General of Indian Meteorological Department woken up?) The conscience-stricken relief specialists are not impressed by such hairsplitting arguments. They think in simple terms. If only Sri Lanka and India had been alerted about the possibility. They had nearly two hours to prepare to face the disaster. Some official scientific agencies in the US are run by those who were with the Pentagon. In that culture, any military-related application gets immediate attention. If any sensitive US military installation had been threatened by this disaster, the response would have been very different. Arguments Then, there will be arguments about the communication networks in the developing countries. This is also partly bogus. Those living on the coastline, have had access to a cheap transistor set for decades. It was not beyond the resources of a developing country to broadcast an alert bulletin, just hinting at the possibility, not certainty. The public broadcast system could have started telling the listeners what is tsumani and what signs to watch out for, what precautions to take. Many people would not have walked towards the receding sea just to watch the fun! The days of beer can physics were long over, but the Third World scientists did not give up that innovative spirit even when the big science era dawned. When ISRO deployed thousands of direct broadcasts satellite TV sets in isolated rural communities that had not seen a moving picture before, they devised a system by which even illiterate villagers could communicate through surface mail what kind of defect had hit their community TV set. When India had less elaborate meteorological data network and file transfer was still in the future, Dr P R Pisharoty used to say how much one could do only if a daily flight from London to New Delhi picked up the hard copy of the data recorded by the British meteorological department. In the coming days, if US Congress holds a hearing on the government’s failure to notify the nations lining the Indian Ocean of a feared tsunami, NOAA is unlikely to admit any mistake. The fact remains that NOAA-operated warning station picked up on the Christmas day the earthquake signals and the signs of a possible tsunami. Already the focus has been shifted to the absence of an early warning system dedicated to the Indian Ocean. A giant whitewash exercise will be on as different national governments begin discussing new facilities running into millions of dollars. The
Third World does not work that way. A relief network starts operating
even in the absence of an automatic bread-making machine or an electric
laundry.
The Home Ministry had a issued a high alert in the morning, warning the re-occurrence tidal wave. The confrontation between the two Ministries took an interesting turn when Home Ministry insisted that its warning still stand. The warning, which the Secretary (Disaster Management) A K Rastogi said, was issued on the basis of information received from the Australia-Pacific Tsunami Centre that tidal wave may strike again. However, the Union Science and Technology and Ocean Development Ministry, which is the nodal Ministry on the matter dismissed the warning in the evening and called upon the people not to believe it as it was not based on scientific data. Talking to newsmen, Union Minister Kapil Sibal emphasized that there was no device or system, which would predict eruption of an earthquake. Contesting the Home Ministry warning to the Chief Secretaries of Tsunami affected Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondicherry and UT Andaman-Nicobar, Kapil Sibal said the warning was issued on the basis of some information put up on a web site by an unknown agency based in US and added the agency is not considered expert in the field of Ocean Development and other related matters. In a veiled attack on the Home Ministry for issue such warning, Sibal said unnecessary panic should have not been created by any agency of the Centre. The Union Home Secretary (DM) A K Rastogi during his briefing on relief measures was caught on wrong foot when reporters asked him pertinent question whether the Home Ministry had confirmed the authenticity of the message flashed on a web site. He declined to elaborate the reasons for the warning and merely repeated the message that there possibilities of tidal wave striking again in the Ocean and Pacific seas. He said that the Home Ministry after receiving the information sent directions to the concerned states and UT to put the administrative machinery on alert and keep a close vigil on the developments in the Ocean. 8. Confusion in Delhi, panic on coastline, Deccan Herald dated 31/12/04. Warning of a possible tsunami strike generated panic, with people grabbing their belongings and rushing to safer ground in Tamil Nadu and the Andamans. NEW
DELHI/CHENNAI, DHNS & IANS: The story unfolded with an emergency meeting chaired by Home Minister Shivraj Patil Thursday morning amid fears of a fresh tsunami that a possible quake near Australia could generate. The Home Ministry issued an alert to affected states and union territories saying: “A number of experts outside the country are suggesting that another tsunami may hit the Indian Ocean (Thursday) afternoon in the event of an earthquake of high intensity which may happen near Australian region.” The ministry also asked the affected regions to be on high alert in the coastal areas and keep continuous vigil on any development in the sea. The statement generated a panic response, with people grabbing their belongings and rushing to safer ground in Tamil Nadu and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Officials evacuated thousands from low-lying areas. The
clarification “We received information from the Science and Technology Ministry that there was a possibility of another tsunami. We discussed the issue as the information was that it may or may not take place,” Mr Patil, who chaired the meeting, said. Mr Sibal, however, said there was no report of a major earthquake that could trigger of another tsunami. Mr
Patil said, it was felt that people should be alerted and that was why
his ministry sent out a warning to the concerned states and Union Territories. “Tsunami can occur only after an earthquake of an intensity over 7.5 and we do not have any information as of now, about it” Mr Sibal said. Five-days after tidal wave played havoc with the coastal regions, the Union Home Minister said the government was considering enacting a law to set up a National Disaster Management Authority to provide immediate relief and rehabilitation at state and district levels. Mr
Patil said government was dispatching an additional battalion of Central
paramilitary forces to carry out rehabilitation works in Nicobar islands. The Centre’s advisory, based on a report from a private science institute in Portland in US put the State administration on high alert, leading to avoidable panic. In Chennai, police forcibly evacuated people living close to the shore. 9.
The tsunami test — Are `reserves' really `resources'?, Business
Line dated 1/1/05 10 . False tsunami alarm took off from Portland lab, The New Indian Express dated 2/1/05 NEW DELHI: What does a small laboratory in Portland with three ``scientists'', a pick-up truck with an antenna and an Oscar-nominated film-maker have in common with thousands of Indians who were evacuated from their homes on Thursday morning amidst pandemonium? It is this Portland-based company, Terra Research, with its motley group that had sent the warning to the Indian Embassy. ``An earthquake of intensity 7.5 to 8.1 was expected in the next 12 hours off the coast of New Zealand,'' said the forecast. Travelling via the Ministry of Science and Technology, it got translated into a terse, clipped warning to all the chief secretaries by the National Disaster Management Agency, saying: ``A number of experts outside the country are suggesting that another tsunami may hit Indian Ocean today afternoon...'' The group claims it is developing a ``new science'' that can predict earthquakes based on studying the earth's ``dark matter''. The mind behind Terra Research, Larry Park, depends on his pick-up truck loaded with a rotating 3-foot disc to pick up vibrations that conventional seismographs can't measure. Is the technology known? ``It is not. Nuclear science was also not known before it was put to use in the 40s,'' said Michael McNulty speaking to this website’s newspaper. McNulty is a film-maker working with Park for the last two years. The earth's ``dark matter'' transits ``resonating energy'' and when it finds a matching energy, it erupts. ``It works like a tuning fork,'' he explained. Using atomic interferometers, he can measure these vibrations 20-80 hours before the actual earthquake. Park's story is the stuff fiction is made of: He was a computer engineer working on building a super-computer. He chanced upon large power surges that were cooking the electrical system of the super computer. His initial investigations showed the energy was escaping from the faults in the earth's crust as the plant was located in an earthquake zone. Since then, he has dedicated the past 10 years developing a system for forecasting earthquakes based on detecting energy before it erupts. Though he claims he has had more than 100 forecasts, the technology has not been peer-reviewed and is not known even in the US. Scientists quoted by the Associated Press junk his technology. Oregon State University geologist Chris Goldfinger said he had not heard of Park but his ideas seemed unlikely. Despite a few accurate predictions, ``there's nothing, to my knowledge, that's worked twice in a row.'' ``It's technical gobbledygook,'' said Bill Steele, spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Seismographs Network at the University of Washington that works with US Geological Survey to monitor earthquakes. But the team has full confidence on the readings of their instruments. ``The earth does not lie. The energy has to go somewhere. It was the same signature on the instrument when the December 26 earthquake struck,'' said McNulty, explaining the rationale of communicating the warning to the Indian Government on ``humanitarian'' grounds. Indonesia and Thailand ignored it but India's enthusiastic response caught them by surprise. Terra Research sells earthquake forecasting tools and services. A book and Park's theory are sold on their website. The companies had approached nearly 20 countries early this year but did not get any response from them. 11.
Amid grief, India asks: 'Why weren't we warned?' , The New Indian Express
dated 2/1/05 The waves struck Indonesia, Thailand and then submerged an air force base on the Indian island of Car Nicobar, 1,200 km from the mainland. Finally, minutes before the deadly waters struck, the sea began to rapidly recede from India's western shore. In some places, children scurried onto the beach to pick up shells. Faxes were sent between government departments, but still no warning was given to the public. Finally the tsunami struck, with devastating effect. "At every stage, there was a shrinking window of opportunity to warn people. But nothing happened," said Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute, a New Delhi-based think-tank. "A country that hopes to run the call centres of the world could not call its own people." India's grief over Sunday's tsunami has not yet given way to anger, with most people too stunned by the awesome power of nature to blame their government. But the media are beginning to ask the question - was the bureaucracy fatally complacent? The Indian Meteorological Department knew of the earthquake within minutes. Its first fax went out two and half hours later, and was sent to the home of the previous government's science and technology minister, rather than his successor, the paper said. The IMD only informed the home ministry itself after the tsunami had struck, a ministry official told Reuters. "The debate is on and it will go on, whether we could have reacted faster," the home ministry's secretary in charge of disaster management, A.K. Rastogi, told Reuters. "My dear, it was a Sunday. Time was taken by the officer to get ready and get into the car -- but there was no delay." "You have to appreciate that there has been no system like this, and now everyone is getting wiser. In future, I hope, the Indian Meteorological Department will be better." It is certainly easy to be wise after the event, and the IMD says it had never in its "wildest imagination" expected a tsunami on this scale to strike India. Seismologist Arun Bapat says he has been warning of the risk of a tsunami for decades, yet no one was listening. "There have been four tsunamis in India in the last 100 years, and it is well-known that an earthquake of such a large magnitude generates a tsunami. There was no system in place." Yet the Meteorological Department is all too convenient a scapegoat, some commentators have argued. India was not among the 26 countries, which were alerted within minutes of the earthquake, using a system of seismic sensors and tidal gauges linked to ocean buoys. The truth, perhaps, is that India has long been more wary of its Indian Ocean neighbours than worried about tsunamis. The final irony is that a system is in place to warn fisherman of an impending cyclone within minutes, with 500 receivers along the coast ready to broadcast in native languages. Four days late, the government sprung into action. Saying it had picked up a warning "from a number of experts outside country" that another earthquake might be on its way, the home ministry issued a tsunami warning. There was widespread panic along the coast and the aid effort was interrupted for hours as coastal areas were evacuated. It turned out to be a false alarm. Science Minister Kapil Sibal called it "hogwash" and relief workers called it a "cruel joke". 12. The blame game heats up, Deccan Herald dated 4/1/05. Officials in the IMD and Department of Science and Technology are busy pointing fingers at each other over the failure to issue a timely warning. BY
KALYAN RAY, Deccan Herald, NEW DELHI: While officials in the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) are busy pointing fingers at each other, senior scientists say they favour a concerted effort to set up an alarm system to avoid similar calamities in the future. The tussle surfaced on Monday at an academic meeting on the tsunami organised by the Society for Indian Ocean Studies, at which a DST official claimed that he had received images of the devastation in southeast Asia from a friend at around 7.00 am on Sunday. “If he had seen those images, why did he not alert others?” a meteorologist present at the meeting wondered aloud. He also said the IMD has been put at the receiving end unnecessarily. “Why is everybody talking about the IMD sending a fax to former minister Murli Manohar Joshi and not mentioning that the same fax was sent to the PMO, Home Ministry and DST secretary’s office as well?” he asked. The first quake, with a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, took place at 6.29 am off the Sumatra coast. The tsunami hit south India at around 8.00 am. Both the DST and IMD have since received flak from many quarters for their failure to issue a warning. Adding to the confusion, at least according to Union Science Minister Kapil Sibal, was that initially almost everybody mistook the tsunami with normal high tide waves. When asked about his claim, the DST official who said he saw photos of the devastation early in the morning said he had contacted his colleagues to spread the information but was not sure whether DST Secretary V S Ramamurthy knew about it. Mr Ramamurthy, it was later discovered, learnt about the incident from television news. Senior scientists have also questioned international claims of issuing a warning which could not make it to the desks of Indian policy makers. “If the Hawaii-based centre came to know about the tsunami in advance, why could it not find anybody in India or Indonesia to warn? At least they could have informed the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) that has a telephonic emergency network for disasters,” S Kulsreshtha, a former IMD director general, said. Meanwhile, the DST has convened an international scientific meeting on tsunamis in the third week of January with the purpose of setting up a Rs 125 crore tsunami warning system that includes installing sea floor pressure sensors and tidal gauges besides creating a three-dimensional digital map of the Indian Ocean. 13.
Meteorological office takes a cue from its tsunami failure, The New Indian
Express dated 4/1/05. In spite of a lead time of almost six hours, no early warning could be issued before tidal surges lashed our coasts. The main reason, top officials admit, was the absence of a system to translate common knowledge into scientific information. And this happened only because we had no idea about this new phenomenon called tsunami. All seismological stations across the globe had recorded the quake with an intensity of nine on a Richter Scale of 10. The abnormal churning of oceans under its impact was also recorded by sensitive monitoring system of many nations, including Pacific Consortium. Though India is not a member of the consortium, one of the friendly nations had faxed a warning note to Delhi. And what happened after that best explains the state of preparedness to combat such eventuality. The note, sources now say, was faxed to an old phone number. And today everyone denies having seen any such communique, a sheet of paper that probably could’ve saved at least a thousand lives. ‘‘We knew there was a wave movement headed in our direction. Now, this was simple common sense as any tidal surge sparked off by quakes in northern hemisphere would head in our direction due to earth’s anti-clockwise rotation. But we failed to fathom that this could possibly end up as a tsunami,’’ a senior official said. This, according to sources, happened purely due to the not-us attitude of our meteorologists. ‘‘Frankly, a tsunami never existed even in our imagination. At least two hours before it actually struck we had knowledge about it. But we never took it for a tsunami. It has taught us some new bitter lessons,’’ a top official confessed. Taking a cue form their failure, the Meteorological office has introduced a 24-hour shift system in crucial offices like Chennai. A system whereby observations made by personnel on previous shift would be systematically handed over to the next batch has also been introduced. Like quakes, tsunamis cannot be predicted. But tsunamied met officers now swear by the dead that they wouldn’t allow a repeat. ‘‘We had a very bad track record in predicting cyclones. But over the last several years, we’ve improved our capability. Now no mass deaths take place due to cyclones. In the same manner, we’ll create a system to warn of tsunamis also,’’ a senior official said. Several steps in this direction have been initiated. While institutions engaged in ocean research are busy planning deployment of a series of tidal gauges, the ISRO is raking its brains for a satellite-based system to read changing moods of waters around this peninsula.
14. A phone call saves a village from tsunami disaster, The New Indian
Express dated 4/1/05 Vijay Kumar, a member of the M.S. Swaminathan Research team posted in Singapore, called up friends in the fishing village of Veerapattinam warning them of the giant tidal wave that had already struck Indonesian coasts. "They immediately went around shouting the warning through broadcasters. The villagers were put on vigil and no fisherman went to the sea that day, thanks to Kumar's call," M.S. Swaminathan, chairperson of the National Commission on Farmers, told IANS on the sidelines of the Indian Science Congress here. As a result, the village in the danger zone had no deaths while its neighbours suffered huge losses both in life and property, he said. Over 500 people died in the union territory of Pondicherry, barely four km from Veerapattinam. The tsunami, considered the world's largest natural disaster, hit Asia on December 26 killing about 150,000 people in 12 countries. 15.
India sought tidal monitoring system in March: US, New Indian Express
dated 5/1/05. US science counsellor Marco de Capua also said the Chilean government was inviting top Indian scientists to observe the tsunami alert system and see how to assess the historical record of tsunamis in a region by studying the coast. "We had a proposal from India in March 2004 to set up a network of tidal ocean level gauges in the Bay of Bengal," de Capua said here. "We have to establish modalities of how to gather data and avail of it in real time, which is a major challenge in India. There was no follow-up of the 2004 proposal, but I hope the tsunami disaster will accelerate the process." The system, which allowed advance cyclone warning, would have alerted the region to the killer tsunamis, said the official. Besides acting as a cyclone warning, this network also enables the ocean to act as a giant barometer that could help calibrate weather models. However, it would take a few years to gather data. Reminding that the Pacific tsunami warning system took 20-25 years to evolve, deCapua said it would take some time to develop confidence in the readings, over a long process of factoring sea bottom effects and geographical effects. As to the cost effectiveness of setting up the system for India and its neighbourhood, the official said India had to do a risk assessment and examine if it was worth it to install a system taking into account the historical pattern of the phenomenon. "Because of the Rim of Fire (volcanoes) in the Pacific, tsunamis happen very often in the region. Geologists here can do work on the coast using paleao-geology so you can tell how many tsunamis have struck in the last 2,000 years." The Chilean government would soon invite Indian scientists to see how the system of palaeo-geology - the study of geologic features once at the surface of the earth but now buried beneath rocks - works. The US diplomat admitted that when the Pacific warning system assessed the December 26 undersea earthquake off Sumatra that generated the giant tsunamis, the warning was relayed too late for the Asian regions to avoid the disaster. But de Capua also pointed at the "enormous costs" involved in false alarms out of what he described as a "very inexact science". "You cannot run around like Chicken Little and cry the sky is falling!" said the official. He recounted that when the quake was first detected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii, they "did not have" the geology tools to estimate the magnitude of the quake. Also, it was Christmas holiday (December 25) in that part of the world so many seismologists were not on duty. It was only later that the initial reading of 8 on the Richter scale was modified to 8.5 and two hours later, to 9. He explained that while a magnitude 8.5 quake could generate only small tsunamis with little impact, a 9 quake was far worse. A notification went out in the Pacific group, but it was not realistically possible to make any other notifications to the Indian Ocean nations affected by the December tsunamis, deCapua said. "It is important for India to assess whether it is worthy to install a tsunami alert, which, if nothing else, can also act as a cyclone warning." It depended on the frequency or probability of another tsunami striking the region, which could only be judged by the history of these disasters. Besides the geological method, the other way of telling was whether the tsunami had been described in any old Indian folklore, remarked de Capua. 16.
Training course helped save lives, The New Indian Express dated 13/1/05
The district administration selected the sandy beach, dotted with coconut trees and lust green cover, for developing it as a tourist destination about six months ago. During an official visit to the tiny coastal hamlet, Collector Gagandeep Singh Bedi had a glimpse of the beautiful beach and planned to turn it a paradise for tourists Prior to this, the administration had decided to train the local youth in disaster management. Soon, a group of revenue officials, including BDO and tashildars, were selected and sent for obtaining proper training on a course relating to natural calamity management in Chennai. The officials, in turn, imparted the training to 180 persons, including a large number of youth in Samiyarpettai. Teams such as village panchayat, rescue and replacement, transit shelter, sanitation and fist aid, relief team, loss assessment and entertainment team were formed in the coastal hamlet. The Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Service personnel, police and the revenue officials had imparted skills to youth in the respective field last October. Skills on saving people from drowning in the sea and safeguarding people from fire mishap, administering emergency medical care to the victims and evacuating the marooned people were taught to the youth. All the knowledge came in handy to them when the killer wave invaded the coastal hamlet on a Black Sunday. Speaking to this website's newspaper, a survivor D Balamurugan said, ‘‘Many were standing on the beach when the huge wave struck the hamlet. Suddenly, many of us found on top of coconut trees and lamp posts. Soon, we realised the intensity of the catastrophe and jumped into water and rescued many persons, including women and aged ones. Many women died due to collapse of walls.’’ R Aravindan , another youth who obtained training on disaster management, said, ‘‘If not for the training, the toll in the calamity would have crossed more than 150.’’ However, the wave caused serious havoc in the hamlet and killed 24 persons, including 20 women and two children. THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS 17.
‘Tsunami’ Murthy finally gets a call from Delhi: Show us your
blueprint, The New Indian Express dated 18/1/05. ‘‘I have brought with me a blueprint for setting up a tsunami warning centre in the Indian Ocean, which I will present at the brainstorming session on January 21-22,’’ the Canadian scientist told this website's newspaper on Monday. Currently here to assist Canadian PM Paul Martin, who begins his bilateral visit on Tuesday, Murthy had told this website's newspaper paper a day after Black Sunday about his earlier offer to set up a warning system for India. That, he had said, was rejected due to ‘‘lack of funds’’. The blueprint, according to him, envisages a system that will have to be a collaborative effort of 36 countries around the Indian Ocean. Murthy is willing to provide free consultancy and devote his entire time to assist New Delhi in setting up the facility. ‘‘The warning centre should be located in India and I feel the right place for this is Visakhapatnam...it can also develop into a natural hazards warning centre,’’ says Murthy, who is vice-president of the Honolulu-based International Tsunami Society. Not only is India geographically well-located for this purpose, Murthy says India alone has the sufficient scientific acumen to carry the project forward. ‘‘Visakhapatnam is the ideal place because the location you choose should not be vulnerable to tsunamis while at the same time it is best located to monitor tsunami,’’ says Murthy. Murthy’s estimate for setting up the system is $150-250 million, which he feels may not be a problem if the project is carried out under the aegis of the United Nations. The annual research and maintenance cost will be close to $3 million. But this is worth the expenditure and giving an account of the system in North America, he says, adding, ‘‘there is no chance that we can miss a tsunami today.’’ While deliberations are underway on a warning system, Murthy says the government must not lose time in collecting scientific data available along the coastline after the disaster. ‘‘The best period for this is now between mid-February and mid-May after which, I am afraid, the evidence will all get washed away. India could take the lead and start collecting the evidence which will be crucial for preparing the computer simulations,’’ says Murthy. Murthy has another piece of advice for the government: consider reorienting the entrance to the Sethusamudram channel from the eastern side. ‘‘My fear is that since this is a deep ocean route, a tsunami will enter the channel and cause devastation in southern Kerala. A slight reorientation will help deflecting the energy back to the ocean,’’ says Murthy. Besides, Murthy says having mangroves helps lessen the impact of tsunamis rather than the more expensive proposition of sea walls. ‘‘But one can considers sea walls to protect vital installations like a nuclear facility or important ports,’’ he says. Tsunami lies at the heart of Murthy’s scientific work since his days as a young researcher at Andhra University. He played a key role in finetuning the tsunami warning system in Canada and has worked closely with collaborative warning centres in Alaska and Hawaii. The key features of the centre would be: • Round-the-clock facility operated by the Indian Meteorological Department with assistance from the National Institute of Oceanography • Elaborate satellite-based communication as well as seismographic network with 36 countries • Unique tidal-gauge network with other countries to monitor water level • Special software for simulation of possible scenarios with available data • Simultaneous network with emergency response teams for quick evacuation, in case of a warning 18.
Advanced tsunami system and still improving, Japanese expert tells how,
The New Indian Express dated 22/1/05. The warning was cancelled as the waves posed no danger. But it took the agency just two minutes to convey the message to the residents in the area. And the man behind this, Kenji Satake of the Active Fault Res. Centre in Tsukuba, Japan, has perfected the speed over a period of 50 years. Satake, who is in the Capital for a two-day brainstorming session, says that Japan, which has among the most advanced tsunami warning system, has been finetuning the system since 1952. ``Earlier, it used to take 20 minutes after the earthquake for a tsunami to be recorded. In 1983 there was a tsunami in the Japan Sea and it took seven minutes after the quake to predict. But the tsunami reached in five minutes,'' said Satake. So the system was finetuned further, and now it takes two minutes after a quake to predict the tidal wave. ``We look at three criterias for a tsunami warning: When an earthquake above 6.5 on the Richter Scale occurs, has 50 km depth or shallow, and if it is beneath the ocean. If these three conditions are met, they just automatically issue a tsunami warning,'' said Satake. Japan works with the numerical stimulation technique. Various combinations are stored in a database which has thousands of computed cases. After a quake, its location, depth and intensity is fed into a computer and the size, speed and direction of a tsunami is calculated within seconds. Japan has in place 300 earthquake-sensors relaying information to six regional centres that operate round-the-clock. The moment a tsunami threat is gauged, local government officials are alerted to send out evacuation alarms and broadcast information on radio and TV. The strength of the Japanese network is also in its fast communication _ all taking 2 minutes. The residents are then given 10 minutes to evacuate. But for India to develop such a system could mean millions of rupees. Satake is unwilling to reveal the amount of money it will take to set up such a system, but is here to sell his proposal to the Indian government. Japan, he said, was willing to help India set up its warning system. Experts, however, are divided on whether India should have its own tsunami warning system. Dr Tad Murthy, president, Tsunami Society of Canada, during his presentation said that India and the other Indian Ocean countries should work towards a warning system together. ``The Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System should include 36 countries working with Unesco,'' said Murthy. Canada, he said, also follows the numeric modelling system. ``It took Canada two years. You have to run every single combination, punch that in and look at the closest match,'' said Murthy. Japan is also one of the founders of the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific. When the earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean, Satake said he got a message on his mobile from the centre saying that an earthquake measuring 8.02 (which was revised later) was recorded in the Indian Ocean. ``The technology is there,'' he said.
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