Dear Friends!

As response to my earlier posting (A New Year, 2005!), I received messages that showed that not everybody is aware that a tsunami warning system is sorely missing in the Indian Ocean and that developing precisely such a system is among the important tasks the world community ought to support, at least post-hoc, in order to give equal dignity to lives all around the globe, if not in the past, then in the future.

Japan and the entire Pacific ocean do have a warning system for tsunamis, since the 1960s. I have spent many months in Japan in 2004 and have followed the excellent 24/24 hours warning systems in place there. Earth quakes cannot be predicted, however, what can be predicted, are tsunamis that are caused by sea quakes.

In the case of the current catastrophe, it took one to two hours for the waves to reach the coast lines of Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka. This offered sufficient time for warnings. As far as I learned from the media, the stations in the Pacific Ocean did detect and measure the earth quake near Sumatra and thus knew about the coming waves. As far as I could gather, they indeed tried to warn the affected countries, however, there was no warning system in place there; nobody was available to receive their messages.

In sum, a warning system for tsunamis is not a dream, it works well since decades in the Pacific region, and it has to be built also in the region of the Indian Ocean.

Most warmly!
Evelin