MARK BANNERMAN: World leaders at the Jakarta summit have been
discussing the possibility of creating a tsunami warning system for
the Indian Ocean, like the one in the Pacific. But systems are only
as good as the people who run them. It now turns out there was a
system in place that could have warned Sri Lanka, India and countries
in Africa of impending disaster. It has a problem, though: it's not
manned on public holidays, and you only get the information if you're
part of an exclusive group of countries. What is this system and why
wasn't it used? The BBC's science editor, Susan Watts, explains.
SUSAN WATTS: The scientific understanding of what happened in the
Boxing Day tsunami is getting clearer. This is the first computer
model to show wave heights as they hit the coast around the Indian
Ocean. The better we understand exactly how the wave hit and when
after the earthquake that caused it, the better equipped we'll be to
warn people next time. This is the Vienna headquarters of an existing
international network of seismic sensors that could have saved the
lives of countless thousands, had its potential been recognised
sooner. The network began to be pieced together in 1997, to check for
clandestine testing of nuclear weapons under the comprehensive test
ban treaty. It's designed to pick up sound waves through earth, water
and air, and has powerful potential for civilian use. Its brochures
even boast of providing early warning for tsunamis. The network was
designed here at the Atomic Weapons Establishment's country research
centre. Known as Black Nest and buried deep in the Berkshire
countryside, this is home to what's arguably the world's premier team
of forensic seismologists. The network's chief architect thinks it's
the obvious candidate for a global tsunami warning system. So why
wasn't it used on Boxing Day? The shame of it is that there was time
to raise the alarm, for at least those coasts further away from the
epicentre. After the quake, the wave took about an hour and a quarter
to reach Thailand and two hours to reach Sri Lanka; six or seven
hours before reaching the coast of Africa. Peter Marshall designed
the test ban network. He talked us through the shock waves picked up
by its instruments. In fact, there was an earlier massive earthquake
just below New Zealand two days beforehand, which some believe may
even have triggered the Sumatran quake.
PETER MARSHALL (TEST BAN NETWORK, ATOMIC WEAPONS ESTABLISHMENT): We
certainly see this rather large event here, and this occurred south
of New Zealand at McCrary Island, and about magnitude 8, but did not
generate a tsunami.
SUSAN WATTS: But this was nothing compared with the saturation
signals received on December 26.
PETER MARSHALL: You can see that the instrument just banged backwards
and forwards, the pin recorder against its end stops, and it just
went on for seven hours.
SUSAN WATTS: Would those monitoring stations in Thailand and
Indonesia have detected this event?
PETER MARSHALL: Oh yes, indeed, without doubt. All 50 elements of the
IMS seismic system would have picked up this event very promptly. In
fact, Chiang Mai - I'm not quite sure what the distance is to Chiang
Mai, but it's not very far, and the seismic waves propagate with such
a high velocity that, within a few minutes, they will have detected
it and it will appear very large - if somebody is in and monitoring
it.
SUSAN WATTS: But most of the network's monitoring stations are
unmanned, particularly during holidays. And the agency that runs the
network is bogged down in Cold War nuclear sensitivities about who
sees its data. But besides its technical attractions, the network
also relies on instant communications, using a database of private
mobile telephone numbers of key points of contact in all the
countries hit by the tsunami. So there would be no excuse that nobody
knows who to warn, as we've heard in soul-searching over the Sumatran
disaster.
PETER MARSHALL: It has a unique communication system, a two-way
system. This is one way in which you can get information. You get
informations from, for example, the hydrocoustics, the infrasound,
and the primary seismic network - 50 stations around the world -
transmits data in real time to the international data centre. It goes
in, it goes through a detection algorithm: "Here is a signal." We've
got lots of signals. We have to associate those. That's all done
automatically on-line. But the communication system can be used to go
back to the station and say, "Hey, are you aware in your country that
there's a large-magnitude event?"
SUSAN WATTS: Ironically, the head of the Test Ban Treaty Organisation
was in Sri Lanka only a couple of weeks before the tsunami hit,
trying to persuade it to sign up.
DR WOLFGANG HOFFMAN (TEST BAN TREATY ORGANISATION): We have been
doing what we could do under the circumstance, and this is those who
have connections to us and wanted to have the data got the data. We
have to get organised better, and with the help of states, because we
are a service organisation. We are not deciding this; we are of
service to states and we want to be of service to states, so they
have to discuss with us - and we will make proposals for this - how
we could help better. But I don't think we would have been able -
even if we would have warned them that there was this quake - I mean,
took the telephone and give them an extra warning - I don't think we
would have been able to avoid the catastrophe, because people on the
shore have not been informed.
SUSAN WATTS: Professor Simon Day welcomes promises of a tsunami
warning system for the Indian Ocean, but wants a similar set-up for
the North Atlantic. He has a special interest in a potential volcanic
land slip on La Palma in the Canaries, which could send 40m-high
waves to the east coast of North America, the Caribbean and Europe.
He also sees the test ban network as a prime candidate for a global
warning system.
PROFESSOR SIMON DAY (UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON): One of the key
problems in setting up a warning system and making sure it works is
actually having the international political agreements in place to
allow it to operate.
SUSAN WATTS: So test ban network would be a case in point?
PROFESSOR SIMON DAY: That's right. A treaty already exists allowing
communication between the test ban monitoring centres and national
governments, and potentially beyond national governments.
SUSAN WATTS: So how did the man who designed the network feel as he
watched events unfold on his television screen?
PETER MARSHALL: I felt absolutely helpless. I mean, my whole working
life has been spent in geophysics, and to see this sort of thing and
know that actually things could be done to lessen the effect of these
things - it will take time, it will take a concerted effort.
SUSAN WATTS: Bad enough that the world missed a chance this
Christmas. It cannot afford to miss the chance now to build a
foolproof global tsunami warning system.
MARK BANNERMAN: Susan Watts from the BBC Newsnight program with that
report.
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