"Why didn't someone pick up the phone and call the Associated Press?"

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center chief Charles "Chip" McCreery said that he did not make such a call since news media were getting the same information Pacific Island nations were in e-mailed earthquake bulletins.

"The information in those bulletins was all we ever knew at the time," McCreery. The bulletins did not mention the possibility of a tsunami having been generated until more than an hour after the earthquake.

By the time his agency learned that a tsunami had been generated, it was already on the news. That's where his geophysicists first learned of it.

The world is trying to figure out what went wrong, why there was no successful warning to victims of the magnitude 9 Sumatran earthquake, whose resulting tsunami killed more than 120,000 and created stunning, multinational coastal devastation.

The issue raises the perhaps surprising point that there is no global emergency alert system — no central point that has the capability of alerting to impending disaster the appropriate individuals, communities and agencies anywhere in the world.

When the geophysicists of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, on the afternoon of Christmas Day, were alerted that a very large, dangerous tsunami had struck areas near the epicenter of the Sumatra quake and was sweeping westward across the Indian Ocean, they did not know whom to call.

"I feel so frustrated and saddened by all the loss," said Ed Teixeira, vice director of state civil defense. "I was under the assumption that we had the contacts in that area to get the word out."

But there is no communication protocol for such an event — there had never been a tsunami in the recorded history of the Indian Ocean and there was no emergency contact plan for one. McCreery's team called the State Department, the American military, the government of Australia, talked with Sri Lankan officials and American embassies in Madagascar and the Maldives, and had other international conversations that the individuals don't fully recall.

One geophysicist earlier described their activities as "not panic, but multitasking."

A problem is that few nations have as robust an emergency warning system as does the state of Hawai'i. Here, tsunami and weather alerts are automatically routed onto broadcast and cable television screens and into radio stations, and a siren system is available to awaken people if they are sleeping.

"You need to be able to reach someone 24 hours a day," said state civil defense tsunami program coordinator Brian Yanagi. "You've got to have the infrastructure at the state, county and local level, a multi-layered approach. It takes years to establish these infrastructure plans."

Yanagi said there is a national warning system in the United States, but "there should be a global alert capacity for any emergency."

McCreery agreed: "It's an interesting idea — to have some sort of 24-hour emergency office with contacts in all countries that can be used in any crisis that occurs."

Teixeira suggested that an emergency alert system, perhaps connected to the United Nations, would serve as a worldwide alert center.

"It's amazing that we don't already have that system in place," he said.

Sen. Olympia Snow (R-Maine), who heads the U.S. Senate subcommittee overseeing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has called for Congressional hearings on the failure, and on finding ways to ensure that the technological capabilities of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center are made available to the Indian Ocean, according to the Boston Globe.

The head of NOAA said his agency did all it was responsible for doing in warning 26 countries in the Pacific.

"We cannot watch tsunamis in the Indian Ocean," said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, the Commerce Department's undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere and a retired Navy vice admiral, noting that no warning system exists for all 11 countries where the death toll has now topped 117,000.

Lautenbacher said he had ordered an internal review of its response to the quake and tsunamis. He said he also has asked NOAA staff to look at creating a "rapid reaction" emergency team and a more global warning system.

But the Indian Ocean crisis raises the issue of other areas without protection.

"There's no system for the Atlantic, either. There's never been any activity on it, because the risk seems so low," McCreery said.

McCreery said that Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's equipment is sufficiently sensitive to detect and locate a large earthquake anywhere on the planet, although in most areas it lacks the water level and pressure gauges that would confirm a tsunami has been created. He said the geologically active Pacific is the only ocean with the necessary instrumentation for detailed tsunami detection.

Carlson said the disaster in the Indian Ocean requires a complete after-event assessment

"Unresolved in my mind at this point is whether there is an under-reliance on low-tech solutions like picking up the phone and calling the news media, and an over-reliance on the high-tech, like e-mail bulletins," he said. "I think an AP flash coming in would be like a lightning bolt. They would have gotten it out."