Hawai'i center had no way to sound alert

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Elizabeth Shogren and Rosie Mestel
Los Angeles Times

Within minutes of the massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, U.S. scientists whose job is to scan for signs of tsunamis suspected that a deadly wave was spreading through the Indian Ocean.

Charles McCreery, the geophysicist in charge of the federal Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in 'Ewa Beach, says "a lot of lives could have been saved" if there were a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Such warnings might have saved thousands of lives. A full two hours elapsed between the quake and the arrival of the tsunami along the coastlines of India and Sri Lanka, sufficient time to evacuate large numbers of people inland.

But no such monitoring system exists in the Indian Ocean.

"Probably the basic reason is that dangerous tsunamis are extremely rare in the Indian Ocean, so it probably was not perceived as a major hazard" by governments in the region, said Harold Mofjeld, a senior scientist at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, part of the federal government's National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

The lack of warning has drawn bitter accusations from some survivors of the disaster. "Nobody was warned," said Nirj Deva, a British member of the European Parliament who was in Sri Lanka. "All these people died unnecessarily," he said in an interview with the BBC. "I want some answers."

Nations in Asia have seismic monitoring instruments that could have told officials that a massive temblor, capable of generating a tsunami, had taken place.

But nations bordering the Indian Ocean "have simply chosen not to spend the money on such a system," said Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbracher, Jr., the NOAA Administrator. And that's a pity, he said, because the system "is not all that expensive."

In 'Ewa Beach, where the government's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is located, the local time was 2:58 p.m. on Christmas afternoon when the massive quake began registering on seismographic instruments.

Within an hour, NOAA sent out a warning to nations that take part in the Pacific tsunami warning system that "there is the possibility of a tsunami near the epicenter" of the quake.

Indonesia and Australia, both part of the Pacific network, were among the countries that received the warning that a wave might hit near the epicenter.

India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, located across the Indian Ocean from the quake, did not receive that warning because they are not part of the system, said Douglas Johnson, director of NOAA's National Weather Service, which handles tsunami warnings.

"We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world," said Hawai'i warning center geophysicist Charles McCreery, who was paged away from a family Christmas dinner and arrived at the center as a second advisory upgrading the likely strength of the quake to 8.5 was sent out.

"If there had been a warning system for the Indian Ocean, a lot of lives could have been saved," he said.

Researchers at the Hawai'i center did try to alert officials in the region about the danger of a tsunami, using contacts they had, according to retired Canadian researcher Tad Murty, who is familiar with their efforts.

"They tried to raise the alarm every possible way," he said. "The problem was with the countries in the Indian Ocean — nobody really responded and nothing much was done about it."

"We didn't have a contact in place where you could just pick up the phone," Dolores Clark, spokeswoman for the International Tsunami Information Center in Hawai'i said yesterday. "We were starting from scratch."

Without monitoring stations, neither officials in the United States nor in Asia had specific information about the size and speed of the wave and where it most likely would hit.

By contrast, the Pacific monitoring network involves hundreds of seismometers positioned around the world, along with coastal tidal gauges and six sophisticated open-ocean sensors known as tsunami buoys sensitive enough to detect variations in ocean height of only a centimeter.

Those systems proved their worth on Nov. 17, 2002, when a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck the Aleutian Islands.

Using the new system, NOAA officials confirmed that the quake did produce a tsunami, but that it would only be about an inch high when it reached Hawai'i, said Johnson.

With the new system, "We could tell Hawai'i, 'You don't need to evacuate,' " Johnson said.

Ironically, on Feb. 16, ministers from dozens of nations, including those in the Indian Ocean region, will meet to sign an agreement creating an Earth Observation System that would ensure that countries are warned when disasters are on their way, Lautenbacher said.

Times staff writers Charles Piller, Esther Schrader and Knight Ridder News Service contributed to this story.