26 December 2007
Tsunami Early Warning System: Protection Against Disaster
INTRODUCTION
A tsunami is a series of ocean waves generated by sudden displacements in the sea floor, landslides or volcanic activity. Nations around the world have been affected by these sometimes giant waves. In December 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake and tsunami devastated the Indian Ocean region, causing the loss of nearly 230,000 people. Tsunamis cannot be prevented, but their impact can be mitigated through community preparedness, timely warnings and effective response.
In response to the 2004 disaster, the United Nations Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, with help from international partners like the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), began coordinating an effort to establish early warning systems for tsunamis and other hazards in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean and the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean. In the meantime, NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (established in 1949), along with the Japan Meteorological Agency, is providing warnings to nations worldwide.
PHOTO GALLERY
1. [ALT: Smoke-silhouetted building and power lines]
ID: 640328026
Gasoline storage tanks on the outskirts of Crescent City, California, burn in the early morning hours of March 28, 1964. The tanks were ignited by power lines broken by a tsunami following a massive earthquake in Alaska the previous day. The 9.2-magnitude temblor was the second largest of the 20th century and the largest ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. (© AP Images)
2. [ALT: Aerial shot of coastline]
ID: 041227011834
In this aerial view taken December 27, 2004, the tsunami-stricken areas near the coastal outskirts of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province, are still waterlogged two days after the great waves struck. (© AP Images)
3. [ALT: People walking through rubble]
ID: 041231012703
Tsunami survivors carry items they saved from the rubble at a commercial area of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province, in this December 31, 2004, photo taken five days after a tsunami ravaged the city and other coastal towns of Sumatra Island and killed more than 166,000 people in Indonesia alone. (© AP Images)
4. [ALT: People in white masks and gowns carrying body bag]
ID: 05010706323
Volunteers carry a body from a refrigerated container in January 2005 near Takuapa, southern Thailand. More than 5,000 people were listed dead in Thailand after a tsunami struck the popular tourist area in December 2004. (© AP Images)
5. [ALT: Person on bicycle]
ID: 05010806457
A tsunami victim moves past the wreckage of collapsed houses in the coastal city of Pittawella, southern Sri Lanka, in January 2005, after the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. (© AP Images)
6. [ALT: Girl with bag standing by rubble]
ID: 05032903024
A girl carries her family’s clothes in her bundle as she returns after the tsunami warning at Srinivasapuram in Madras, India, in March 2005. Thousands of people returned to their homes along India's southern coast after fleeing in fear of a second devastating tsunami in less than four months. In the background is the debris of houses destroyed by the December 2004 tsunami. (© AP Images)
7. [ALT: Person wearing backpack holding child]
ID: 05122602722
A volunteer carries a mock injured child during a tsunami warning drill in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, on December 26, 2005. Indonesia was testing an interim tsunami warning system, sounding alarms that sent thousands of residents running through town streets. (© AP Images)
8. [ALT: Person making phone call flanked by two others]
ID: 070516028
Geophysicists Stuart Koyanagi, left, and Brian Shiro and Charles McCreery, director of NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, take part in a tsunami drill at the center in May 2006. The first Pacific-wide tsunami drill began with mock warnings going out just hours after two real Pacific earthquakes nearly stole the show. (© AP Images)
9. [ALT: People standing near sign]
ID: 0605170125
Residents of the Filipino coastal village of Buhatan, 340 kilometers southeast of Manila, stand beside a sign that reads "Tsunami, This way to safe place" during the first trans-Pacific tsunami warning drill in May 2006. The Philippines is among more than 24 countries that joined an unprecedented drill to test a tsunami warning system in the Pacific Ocean. A Pacific-wide warning system had been in place since 1965, but a full oceanwide exercise never had taken place. (© AP Images)
10. [ALT: Man at podium next to buoy]
ID: 06120101375
Two years after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Ralph Boyce addressed a gathering during official ceremonies for the first tsunami-detection station, designed and built by NOAA, on December 1, 2006, in Phuket, Thailand. The deep ocean detection device, one of two stations placed in the Indian Ocean by the United States, is designed to give those in the Indian Ocean area warning of tsunami waves and other coastal hazards. (© AP Images)
11. [ALT: People looking at buoy]
ID: 07091907569
Indonesian scientists inspect a U.S.-funded tsunami warning station before its launching ceremony aboard research vessel Baruna Jaya III at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, September 19, 2007. Scientists from Indonesia and NOAA installed the station within days off Sumatra Island, which was hit by a powerful earthquake a week earlier that damaged thousands of buildings and killed 23 people. (© AP Images)
12. [ALT: Two people walking through rubble]
ID: 070816027729
In the early evening of August 15, 2007, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake occurred near the coast of central Peru, about 145 kilometers southeast of Lima. The earthquake killed more than 500 people, injured 1,600 and left tens of thousands homeless. NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii issued and later cancelled a tsunami warning and watch for the Pacific coast of South and Central America, which experienced small tsunami waves less than a meter high. The Peruvian tsunami was detected by a Chilean-owned tsunami-detection station that sent data to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center within one hour of tsunami generation. (© AP Images)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
