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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Earthquake & Killer Tsunamis, Christmas 2004
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 12-30-2004 02:35 AM
quote: Randy Stankey
Speaking of brain power... If you noticed an undersea earthquake of magnitude 9.5 wouldn't you have called somebody? It doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to understand that a quake that big will undoubtedly touch off a tsunami.
http://mathaba.net/x.htm?http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=90908
Extract:
Not until the deadly wave hit Sri Lanka and the scientists in [the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in] Honolulu saw news reports of the damage there did they recognize what was happening.
"Then we knew there was something moving across the Indian Ocean," said Dr. Charles McCreery, the center's director.
"We wanted to try to do something, but without a plan in place then, it was not an effective way to issue a warning, or to have it acted upon," Dr. McCreery said. "There would have still been some time - not a lot of time, but some time - if there was something that could be done in Madagascar, or on the coast of Africa."
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One of the few places in the Indian Ocean that got the message of the quake was Diego Garcia, a speck of an island with a United States Navy base, because the Pacific warning center's contact list includes the Navy. Finding the appropriate people in Sri Lanka or India was harder.
The experts knew they were set up for the wrong ocean, but over a holiday weekend, Dr. Kong said, "it's tough to find contact information."
"I think they made their best efforts to contact as many people they thought they could get to," she said. After pushing the button to send out the initial warning to contacts in the Pacific, where about 90 percent of the tsunamis are observed, "they're trying to think of personally who might they call, who might then know who to call."
It must be pretrry horrible to know what is going on, in advance, and be powerless to even get the warning out...
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Mark J. Marshall
Film God
Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 12-30-2004 11:33 AM
As a side note, it seems the Indian ocean isn't the only place where tsunami warning systems are less than adequate. Apparently the Atlantic ocean is in danger of a nice sized wave too if a certain active volcano on the canary islands erupts and dislodges a gigantic rock that's currently hanging on by a thread.
If we're going to start building tsunami warning systems, that seems like a good place to start.
Link
A tsunami wave higher than any in recorded history threatens to ravage the US coastline in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands, UK and US scientists will report today. Locations on both African and European Atlantic coastlines - including Britain - are also thought to be at risk.
The new research, a collaboration between Dr. Simon Day of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at UCL and Dr. Steven Ward of the University of California, reveals the extent and size of the mega-tsunami, the consequence of a giant landslide that may be triggered by a future eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano.
Previous research by Simon Day and colleagues predicted that a future eruption would be likely to cause a landslide on the western flank of Cumbre Vieja. A block of rock approximately twice the volume of the Isle of Man would break off, travelling into the sea at a speed of up to 350 kilometres per hour. The disintegration of the rock, this earlier study predicted, would produce a debris avalanche deposit extending 60 kilometres from the island. The energy released by the collapse would be equal to the electricity consumption of the entire United States in half a year.
The new model - which provides further insights into the consequences of the collapse - predicts that the landslide would create an exceptionally large tsunami with the capability to travel great distances and reaching speeds of up to 800 kilometres per hour. Immediately after Cumbre Vieja's collapse a dome of water 900 metres high and tens of kilometres wide will form only to collapse and rebound. As the landslide continues to move underwater a series of wave crests and troughs are produced which soon develop into a tsumani 'wave train' which fuels the waves progress. After only 10 minutes, the model predicts, the tsunami will have moved a distance of almost 250 kilometres.
The greatest effects are predicted to occur north, west and south of the Canaries. On the West Saharan shore waves are expected to reach heights of 100 metres from crest to trough and on the north coast of Brazil waves over 40 metres high are anticipated. Florida and the Caribbean, the final destinations in the North Atlantic to be affected by the tsunami, will have to brace themselves for receiving 50 metre high waves - higher than Nelson's column in London, some 8 to 9 hours after the landslide. Towards Europe waves heights will be smaller, but substantial tsunami waves will hit the Atlantic coasts of Britain, Spain Portugal and France.
For tsunamis striking flat-lying coastline regions such as Florida, calculating the inundation distance - the extent to which water penetrates inland taking the form of fast moving floods after waves break - is crucial to assessing potential damage. Dr. Day and his colleagues estimate inundation distances in the region of several kilometres from the coast. Accurate estimates of the scale of economic loss are yet to be made but are thought to be in the multi trillion USD range.
Placing the results of the Cumbre Vieja model in its wider context, Dr Simon Day, and Post-doctoral Research Fellow at UCL, said:
'Anyone planning a holiday to the Canary Islands and the islanders themselves need not panic. Cumbre Vieja is not errupting so the short-term and medium-term risks are negligable.'
Dr Day continued:
' The collapse will occur during some future eruption after days or weeks of precursory deformation and earthquakes. An effective earthquake monitoring system could provide advanced warning of a likely collapse and allow early emergency management organisations a valuable window of time in which to plan and respond.’
' Eruptions of Cumbre Vieja occur at intervals of decades to a century or so and there may be a number of eruptions before its collapse. Although the year to year probability of a collapse is therefore low, the resulting tsunami would be a major disaster with indirect effects around the world. Cumbre Vieja needs to monitored closely for any signs of impending volcanic activity and for the deformation that would precede collapse.'
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Thomas Procyk
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1842
From: Royal Palm Beach, FL, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 12-30-2004 01:02 PM
***This post has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen, edited for content, and edited to run in the nerves alloted.***
It just keeps getting worse! ![[Frown]](frown.gif) In my opinion, in a situation as extreme as this, they should move all the survivors as far inland as possible and treat them, and GET THE HELL OFF of the beach! Forget about rebuilding or looking for people, it's time to just face the facts, leave the coast for a while and let everything rot for a few months on its own. If you start sending supplies to the coastal areas, those people are just going to stay there and get sick from disease. If you sent aid workers into those areas, they're going to get sick and bring it back with them inland or even back to their home countries. Things could get really ugly once disease starts breaking out.
I've seen lots of ameture video of this. CROWDS of people on the beach - many of them children - just standing there and watching the thing coming!! The shore didn't "retract" before the wave as some have said. Just this huge thing came rolling in. It's eerily frightening to hear the "oohs" and "aahs" turn into screams of terror. Many of the videos show people getting swept away right before your eyes. Too much for me to take at times.
Don't want to straddle the political fence, |yet I wish to share my thoughts as others do who straddle on the other side of the fence| but the amount of aid we're sending disappoints me. I saw the president in a press conference yesterday (from the "western whitehouse" in crawford ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) ) and other than bouncing back and forth between saying 35 Million and 35 Billion, he insisted that it's a sufficient amount of aid. Numbers:
Promised Aid to Tsunami Victims: $35 million
Cost of |a presidential| "inauguration": $45 million
Est. cost for one day of |a typical| "war" |adjusted for inflation|: $175 million
|Cost of aid to Florida Hurricane victims including counties such as miami/dade which recieved minimal damage while FEMA still refuses to aid many hard-hit victims|: $3 Billion
Turning a natural disaster into a bullet-train for public relations: PRICELESS
There are some things you can't buy...
=TMP=
[ 12-30-2004, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Thomas Procyk ]
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 12-30-2004 04:10 PM
I'm non-American, and not in America, so I offer this suggestion:
quote: Mark J. Marshall
... because some idiots among us can't help but find a way to turn the discussion into a flame war against Bush! WTF???
Take a named president out of the equation then. The only mention of said named president was the second line of the spoof. Lets say it didnt matter who won the last election. Whoever won, there would be a presidential inaguration. It would not be cheap. The numbers would be the similar.
Now its not a bash at any named individual. Political divide bridged.
EDIT: Content removed that although I believe to be accurate, could be read (and I think Phil did ![[Smile]](smile.gif) ) to give completely the wrong impression. For those who saw it, apologies if I caused offense, that was not my intention, and in hindsight, perhaps I should not have said it.
[ 12-30-2004, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: David Buckley ]
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 12-30-2004 05:52 PM
quote: David Stambaugh
What is an acceptable number to you today Tom? $500M? $2B? $20B? How about a blank check? To whom should the check be made out? Who's going to make sure the money goes where it's needed and doesn't line the pockets of crooked contractors and politicians?
I may not be Tom, but I'd like to comment on this.
I think a blank cheque is pretty much what's needed; that doesn't mean that an infinitely large amount has to be spent. I have no idea how much needs to be spent, but if the relief workers on the ground say it is needed, and needed now, then I think they should get it. Charities can raise money, but it takes time; governments can provide funding quickly. Governments raise money by taxation of large numbers of people; they can raise very large amounts by charging only a small amount to each of those people.
There are certain tasks which need to be undertaken urgently, mainly disease prevention measures, the burial or cremation of the dead, and provision of clean drinking water for example. Just about anything that those on the ground say is needed to do this should be provided, and governments should fund it.
Those who are sitting in offices in London or New York or Tokyo or whereever are not the ones who can say what is needed. I would give those on the ground just abount anything that they consider is needed urgently, and allow them to ensure that it is used effectively.
There is a time for private fund-raising, and for disussion of how such funds should be spent, but that's a longer term issue, it won't help somebody to get clean drinking water today, rather than tomorrow.
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![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Thanks for all the info, I posted that more to question whether anyone knows if the system was in works when the quake struck or if it still had not been begun. Either way, like you said, the knowledge is just not being applied and as a result 6 Springfield, Vermont's worth of people are dead and more are probably coming from the diseases, hunger, and displacement this will cause. 
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