Tsunami Warning System in place
Wed Jun 28, 2006 at 12:11:51 PM PDT
A year ago the day after Christmas, we all watched in horror as the news broadcast footage of the tsunami that was caused by a massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia.
This was truly a worldwide disaster, as European tourists, Tamil fishermen, Indonesian villagers and even supermodels and Thai royalty were caught up in the devestation (the grandson of His Royal Highness, King Phumiphon was killed in Phuket province). 200,000 people of dozens of nationalities were killed in over a dozen countries.
Many of these deaths could have been prevented, had there been a warning system in place.
UNESCO has announced that a warning system in the Indian Ocean basin is up and running.
The UN organisation, which has overseen the project, says the whole region can now receive and distribute warnings of possible tsunamis.
The system is in place 18 months after the devastating tsunami of December 2004 that killed more than 200,000.
The Pacific region has had a system for 40 years and others are planned for the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Caribbean.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
Pacific nations had the forethought to put together a warning system for the Pacific region because most off-shore earthquakes occur in the Ring of Fire, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans don't have the same frequency of earthquakes. It didn't help that the nations that are on the Indian Ocean are poorer.
Disclosure: I saw the effects of the devastation firsthand. I was a Crisis Corps Volunteer who worked in Sri Lanka for three months from July to September. The Crisis Corps is a small organization within Peace Corps where Returned Peace Corps Volunteers can serve in short-term projects, mostly dealing with the after effects of complex emergencies.
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