India and Sri Lanka, the two nations with highest death tolls from yesterday's devastating tidal waves, are not among the group of 26 countries that comprise the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System. Had they been part of the alert system, say scientists — lives could have been saved. Snip from NYT story:
Although waves swamped parts of the Sumatran coast and nearby islands within minutes, there would have been time to alert more distant communities if the Indian Ocean had a warning network like that in the Pacific, said Dr. Tad Murty, an expert on the region's tsunamis who is affiliated with the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, in fact, scientists running the existing tsunami warning system for the Pacific, where such waves are far more common, sent an alert from their Honolulu hub to 26 participating countries, including Thailand and Indonesia, that destructive waves might be generated by the Sumatra tremors.
But there was no way to convey that information speedily to countries or communities an ocean away, said Dr. Laura S. L. Kong, a Commerce Department seismologist and director of the International Tsunami Information Center, an office run under the auspices of the United Nations.
Link to NYT story, and Link to USGS data on the "great earthquake" at magnitude 9.0 which occurred off the west coast of Northern Sumatra Sunday.
