TSUNAMI:
SIMPLE STEPS THAT COULD SAVE THOUSANDS OF LIVES
By Dietrich Fischer
IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE, JANUARY
2005
In a January 2 interview on CNN, the head of the US
National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration was asked, Why was no warning
issued to the
countries hit by a tsunami after NOAA detected the earthquake
on 26
December? He responded that, first, there was no warning
system in place;
and second, that NOAA lacked a precise model of the
tsunami and could not
have known how many people would need to evacuate, writes
Dietrich Fischer,
Academic Director of the European University Center
for Peace Studies in
Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Co-director of TRANSCEND,
a global peace and
development network.
In this article, Fischer writes that even if the job
description of the
scientists who detected the earthquake did not include
warning those whose
lives were in danger, it was their moral responsibility
to do so. They may
not have had phone numbers of the relevant government
agencies in the
affected countries. But if they had informed people
who could pass on the
warning, even at night, they might have been able to
reach some people in
the affected areas who could have forwarded the information
to others.
And the US State Department could have contacted foreign
governments and its
embassies in the region directly. It took the tsunami
3 hours and 52 minutes
to reach Sri Lanka, less for Thailand, but plenty of
time for a warning.
(*) Dietrich Fischer is Academic
Director of the European University Center for Peace
Studies in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Co-director
of TRANSCEND, a global peace and development network
(fischer@epu.ac.at).
//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN
AUSTRALIA, CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND,
POLAND, THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//
This is an excerpt from the
article. Editors interested in acquiring the full text
of these columns, please contact romacol@ips.org specifying
the name and address of the publication as well as a
proposed rate. Unfortunately, we cannot comply with
requests from individuals or organisations that do not
represent media outlets.
|
