Lakshaman Bandaranayake of Vanguard Management, who worked with LIRNEasia closely in the post-tsunami period, was kind enough to arrange meetings for Stuart Weinstein of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center who attended the LIRNEasia@5 conference. For those who may not know, Stuart was at the controls on December 26, 2004 when the great earthquake that caused the tsunami occurred. I visited PTWC a few weeks later and met Stuart and his colleague Barry Hirshorn leading to my first piece on early warning, post-tsunami. Despite all the controversies that were swirling around, Stuart and his colleagues were incredibly forthcoming and open, even agreeing to give evidence via a video link for the useless Presidential Commission on the Tsunami. Being the practical man he is, Stuart installed some new software at the Met Department that will help them make better use of ocean level information sent by the World Meteorological Organization and has also drafted some recommendations for the Sri Lanka authorities on how to improve their processes.
We assume that the failure of the Hikkaduwa tower will be examined as part of the comprehensive review the Minister has called for. The important thing is to think about warning as a chain with many links. If one link breaks, the chain breaks. The conclusions are that one must minimize the number of links and ensure that each is link is robust. It appears from the story that a link in the Galle district failed.
It has been a practice at LIRNEasia to write an assessment of the responses to potentially tsunamigenic events in the region. We commented on Nias and Pangandaran. Now that the discussion on the response is starting, here is our take: Lessons from the Sri Lanka tsunami warnings and evacuation of September 12-13, 2007 The tragedy of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was the absence of any official warning. The September 12th Bengkulu earthquake shows that this is unlikely to be the case in the future. We have seen that the new institutions created since the 2004 tsunami have the will and the capacity to act.
According to the Independent, Sri Lanka is the best prepared to communicate tsunami warnings to at-risk populations on the coast. We wish to believe this. But unlike the highly-trained journalist from the Independent, we have taken the trouble to ask a few questions: 1. Does Sri Lanka have a single national multi-hazard warning center? NO.
The Sri Lanka Disaster Minister is quoted by the Sunday Times (23 July 2006, p. 2) as stating that “In the wake of last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Indonesia, the country was fully prepared within 23 minutes as an early warning reached the Met Department.” According to the 17 July timeline.ppt, the PTWC and the Japanese Center issued the first bulletin within 17 minutes of the earthquake. The Minister indicates that the entire country was fully prepared within 6 minutes of receiving that bulletin.
The Presidential Commission on the Tsunami has been holding public hearings. LIRNEasia and Vanguard Foundation gave evidence last week, 14th of July 2005. Our evidence mostly covered the content and process of the NEWS:SL report, but in addition evidence was given of our experience with the 28th of March event and the earlier difficulties we experienced with the Met Department’s fax numbers not working and e-mail addresses given to Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaai bouncing. The Navy and the Police are being questioned on who knew what when. It looks like the Commission is pursuing an interesting line of investigation.