This time, region heard tsunami center warnings
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Armed with a list of contacts they did not have when a deadly wall of water swept through the Indian Ocean last year, geophysicists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center yesterday were able to warn countries in the region that a powerful earthquake might generate another killer wave.
Lucy Pemoni • Associated Press
"We had phone numbers and we had e-mail addresses from places that had contacted us after the big December earthquake so we had a lot of numbers," said Barry Hirshorn, a geophysicist at the warning center. "This time around we had people to contact and we called everybody very quickly. Instead of having no one to talk to we had lots of people to talk to."
David Burwell, an oceanographer at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in 'Ewa Beach, shows where a small tsunami hit the Maldives Islands after yesterday's earthquake in Indonesia.
The center, which monitors earthquakes and tsunamis in the Pacific Rim from a small building near 'Ewa Beach, issued a bulletin 20 minutes after the quake, saying there was "the potential to generate a widely destructive tsunami in the ocean or seas near the earthquake." It urged the evacuation of coastal areas within 600 miles of the epicenter.
Then officials at the center started dialing phones and sending e-mails, Hirshorn said.
One of the first agencies called was the State Department in Washington, D.C., which has an operations center and the ability to simultaneously alert U.S. embassies worldwide. The operations center had been in existence for a long time, but the tsunami warning center did not know about that until after last year's disaster, Hirshorn said.
The 8.7 magnitude quake, which was centered 125 miles off Sumatra, did not generate a significant tsunami. The tallest wave yesterday, about 2 feet, was recorded in the northern Seychelles, Hirshorn said.
Last year's tsunami waves killed an estimated 175,000 people and left 106,000 missing.
Meanwhile, the initial worries about a tsunami threat sent some Hawai'i residents with family in the area reaching for their phone or e-mail.
Bede Cooray, who helped to organize a relief drive for Sri Lankan victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami, called a friend whose position in the Sri Lankan army gave him quick access to information.
"They were giving notice to coastal areas, without even knowing whether it generated a tsunami," he said.
Yesterday's quake was detected here at 6:09 a.m. Hawai'i time.
Why no tsunami?
A question for scientists now is why no devastating tsunami was generated.
"I'm baffled an earthquake this size didn't trigger a tsunami near the epicenter," said Robert Cessaro, a geophysicist at the 'Ewa Beach center, which is operated by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
Charles McCreery, the center's director, said earthquakes of at least 8.0 magnitude usually generate major tsunamis.
"We expected some destructive tsunami with some distant destructive effects. It was surprising," he said.
The latest event also demonstrated "there's a whole world of uncertainty about trying to judge a tsunami based on the earthquake data," he said.
The warning center initially estimated the Dec. 26 earthquake to have a magnitude of 8.0, but it turned out to be much larger — a 9.0.
Yesterday's preliminary estimate was higher, magnitude 8.5.
"The one we initially thought was bigger turns out to have no effect," McCreery said. "The one we initially thought was smaller had a huge effect. This is the challenge of tsunami warning."
Some scientists believe the depth of the quake was the reason no tsunami was generated.
The U.S. Geological Survey said yesterday's quake struck about 19 miles under the seabed. The Dec. 26 quake was closer to the surface.
"What causes a tsunami is if the ocean floor heaves, so if it's a very shallow tsunami, it's apt to heave the floor more than a deeper one. If it's very deep, it sort of gets absorbed on its way up," said Allen Clark, director of the Pacific Disaster Center on Maui.
The uncertainty points to the need for additional technology, Hirshorn said. Water-level gauges, which measure the rise and fall of the ocean, are a simple and inexpensive solution, and could easily be placed along shorelines, he said.
"With them you can actually observe the tsunami — or not," he said.
Gauges not enough
Coastlines close to the earthquake would have been inundated by a tsunami within five to 15 minutes — critical information for communities farther away, Hirshorn said.
The warning center had access to a dozen of those gauges yesterday that it did not have in December, but it was nowhere near enough to do a thorough job, Hirshorn said. The first available reading, from Cocos Island, which is off the west coast of Australia, came 2 1/2 hours after the earthquake.
"If we had water-level instruments within the first half-hour to 45 minutes, we could have point-blank told people in
Sri Lanka and Thailand, 'Don't worry,' " he said.
When the earthquake struck on Dec. 26, the warning center staff said it frantically tried to contact Indian Ocean nations of a potential disaster. But with only two clients in the Indian Ocean — Australia and Indonesia — and no contact list, valuable time was lost. They worked for hours, sounding warnings as the tsunami swept across the vast ocean basin with deadly results.
The warning center was sued earlier this month by Indian Ocean tsunami survivors and relatives of victims who said the center did not do enough to protect people.
Military response
No requests for military assistance had been received by yesterday afternoon, said Marine Maj. Guillermo Canedo at U.S. Pacific Command headquarters at Camp Smith.
"We are assessing the situation. We are identifying assets that could be called if requested."
Three days after the Dec. 26 tsunami, U.S. military forces, under the command of Combined Support Force 536, deployed to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia to provide humanitarian assistance to support the countries' disaster recovery activities.
As of Feb. 14, Combined Support Force 536 had ceased tsunami operations. At least 24 million pounds of relief supplies and equipment were delivered to the region.
The hospital ship USNS Mercy yesterday was approaching East Timor, thousands of miles from the earthquake epicenter.
The Mercy "would likely be the first to respond if we received a request for assistance," Canedo said.
Officials at the East-West Center said none of its students lived in the areas suffering the worst damage in yesterday's quake, officials said.
However, said Terry Bigalke, the quake has undoubtedly worsened the psychological trauma.
"Any time it happens it rekindles the fear," said Bigalke, director of the center's education program. He was in Jakarta last week for meetings with Indonesian officials on ways to help the country recover from the loss of faculty and staff at higher-education institutions.
Slight tremors have been a common experience in Indonesia, he said.
"When we were there, every time there was a tremor, people would look at each other in terror," Bigalke said.
Advertiser staff writers William Cole and Vicki Viotti and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
