It was no ‘Act of God’

Indian Ocean tsunami disaster

It was no ‘Act of God’

DESPITE THE biblical scale of floods and destruction, the death along the
Indian Ocean coastline was no ‘Act of God’.

Jon Dale

It was not inevitable that an earthquake beneath the sea, 600 miles from
the Indonesian island of Sumatra, would lead to the loss of more than 100,000
lives over the following hours.

Had a warning system been set up, most could have been saved. Even without
an Indian Ocean-based warning system, if the Pacific-based system had
communicated with effective national and regional emergency response teams,
the disaster would have been far less deadly.

Predictable

Earthquakes are unpredictable events, caused by the movement of tectonic
plates of the earth’s crust against each other sending out shock-waves.
Although no early warning system can predict the timing of an earthquake, a
tsunami is predictable.

An earthquake below the ocean floor sets up waves of water that move at
speeds of 500-700 kilometres/hour. Their height may be as little as a
centimetre, but when these waves reach shallow water they slow down and grow
in height and destructive power.

When an earthquake occurs it is detectable with seismographic recorders,
even thousands of miles away. The epicentre can be identified quickly and an
estimate made of the likely risk of tsunami waves. Other equipment can measure
the presence of such waves when they are still small in height and far out to
sea.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) was set up in 1949, based in
Hawaii. Despite its existence, destructive tsunamis have continued. But
technological improvements in recent years have enormously improved the
ability of scientists to detect them and issue warnings to coastal areas of
their approach.

Real-time record

Since 1995 the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART)
system has been developed in the Pacific. Six communication buoys are linked
to anchored bottom pressure recorders, sending by satellite a real-time record
of changes.

In 2001 there was an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale in
Alaska. The data was reported on the DART website within four minutes.

Indian Ocean scientists have been urging countries in the region to protect
their high population densities by being prepared. At a meeting of the UN’s
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in June last year, specialists
concluded that the "Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and
distant tsunamis" and should have a warning network – but no action was
agreed.

On 24 December 2004 a warning was issued after the biggest earthquake of
the year (8.1 on the Richter scale), 1,000 miles south west of New Zealand.
The PTWC website warned of the possibility of "widely destructive" tsunamis.

However, the earthquake turned out to be caused by tectonic plates moving
sideways against each other, rather than up and down, lessening the effects on
the ocean above

Two days later the horrifying tragedy of the Indian Ocean tsunami unfolded.
Tens of thousands living in poor fishing and farming communities, tourism
workers and tourists, were swept away. They continued their normal activities,
unaware of the approaching waves even minutes beforehand.

Australia’s agency for geological research, Geoscience Australia, indicated
that effective communication systems in South Asia might have bought 15
minutes for parts of the Thai coast and longer for Sri Lanka, which was hit
two-and-a-half hours after the earthquake.

Enough time for a warning

"There’s no reason for a single individual to get killed in a tsunami," Tad
Murty, a Canadian tsunami specialist was quoted in The Independent: "The waves
are totally predictable. We have travel-time charts for the whole of the
Indian Ocean. From where this earthquake hit, the travel time for waves to hit
the tip of India was four hours. That’s enough time for a warning."

The Hawaii PTWC had detected the 9.0 Richter earthquake and likelihood of
tsunamis. Incredibly, it issued warnings to Pacific countries but not to those
around the Indian Ocean. "We tried to do what we could. We don’t have any
contacts in our address book for anybody in that particular part of the
world," said Charles McCreery, director of the centre (quoted in The
Independent).

Disaster

The entire Japanese public transport system can be halted as soon as an
earthquake occurs. In Sri Lanka the ‘Queen of the Sea’ train, with 1,700 on
board, started its journey from Colombo to Galle after the tsunami had already
left Indonesian waters.

Two hours later the train ran into a six metre-high wall of water. Only a
few dozen are thought to have survived, making it the world’s worst rail
disaster ever.

Thammasarote Smith, a former senior forecaster at Thailand’s Meteorological
Department, said governments could have done much more to warn people of the
danger. "The department had up to an hour to announce the emergency message
and evacuate people, but they failed to do so," he told The Bangkok Post. "It
is true that an earthquake is unpredictable, but a tsunami – which occurs
after an earthquake – is [predictable]."

Without an immediate massive mobilisation of resources many more will die
from disease and starvation than were swept away by the waves.

Preventable death

Capitalism has failed to protect the people of the Indian Ocean coastal
areas from preventable death. It is unable to respond with the urgency and
planning needed to save the survivors and help them rebuild.

It now seems, through reports from the areas closest to the earthquake’s
epicentre, that even with an early warning system, many people would have
died. But even a very limited warning would have saved some lives.

Now the task is to prevent further loss of life through disease and
starvation.

As if the massive destruction caused by the tsunami wasn’t enough, reports
now indicate that a nuclear power station near Madras had to be shut down when
its cooling system was flooded. Imagine the situation if a Chernobyl disaster
had developed as well!

The resources of the world need to be owned and democratically planned by
the working class and poor peasants to ensure that natural events, like
earthquakes and tsunamis, are minimised and those affected helped to recover.

There is another warning, too, from these terrible events. If global
warming continues and ocean levels keep rising, low-lying areas such as the
Maldives and Andaman Islands will be subjected to further floods and
destruction. This will not be from rare events like tsunamis, but storms which
occur frequently. The most effective natural defences, like mangrove swamps
and coral reefs, are the most vulnerable to capitalism’s destructive
developments.


Why no Indian Ocean early warning system?

WHY HAS an Indian Ocean version of the DART system not been set up?

"The instruments are very expensive and we don’t have the money to buy
them," said Budi Waluyo of the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency.
Yet DART’s annual running cost was under $2 million in 2002. Such sums are
spent in a few minutes of high technology warfare.

How much has the Indonesian government spent fighting in East Timor and
Aceh, the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil Tigers, the Indian
government in Kashmir or the Somali government fighting Eritrea?

How much interest on debt is sucked out of the region each year by the
major capitalist nations? These same governments that now take days to put
together relief missions of a few million dollars take far more out year after
year.

How much will they put back into reconstructing the homes, boats, bridges
and roads that have been destroyed? After the Bam earthquake in Iran, exactly
one year earlier, $1 billion aid was promised. Only $17 million has been paid
so far.


The risk…to the profits from tourism

Chcheep Mahachan of the Thailand seismological bureau said: "A proper
warning was not given. If we had given the warning and then it hadn’t
happened, then it would have been the death of tourism in those areas."

The bureau chief, Sulamee Prachuab, was quoted in The Guardian: "Five years
ago, the meteorological department issued a warning of a possible wave after
an earthquake in Papua New Guinea, but the tourism authority complained that
such a warning would hurt tourism."