Word: tsunamis
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...official in charge of Indonesia's new tsunami-warning system told TIME that his office received an email warning from the PTWC on the morning of Dec. 26 but failed to see the message until the following day. The official, who goes by the name Fauzi, was not at work on that fateful morning. Thai officials, meanwhile, knew that a big quake had occurred. For one thing, plenty of people in Bangkok felt it. At 8:15 a.m. on Dec. 26, says the duty officer at the Seismic Monitoring and Statistic Center in Bangkok, "The phone calls started pouring...
Even if a warning had been sent out, it might not have done much good, at least in areas near the quake's epicenter. In Pacific nations like Japan, people know what to do when they hear a tsunami is coming. "It's very much a matter of having the education in place," McFadden says. "In many cases, you know what happens if you tell people there's going to be a tsunami? They go down to the beach to have a look." And given the size of the earthquake, it is hard to believe that any warning system would...
...India and Sri Lanka are a different story. It took nearly two hours for the tsunami to reach those countries, but in neither country did residents receive any warning of the likely disaster. "That morning, the sea was like it always is," says Baalaramanan, 23, a fisherman in the Indian town of Akkarapettai. "Then suddenly it was on fire. Boiling. It lifted up 11 yards and paused, almost like it was surveying us below it. And then it fell. It consumed one house after another, like paper boxes." A day later, rescuers found the bodies of 300 fish sellers...
...impossible to know how many lives might have been saved if a tsunami-warning system had existed in the countries ringing the Indian Ocean. In the wake of the catastrophe, the U.N. announced that by next year it plans to link countries in South and Southeast Asia with the Pacific Ocean network that alerts countries like Japan, Australia and the U.S. when tsunamis pose risks to their territories...
...information about a Swedish family--a mother, father and four children. As the full horror of the death toll in Aceh became apparent at the end of the week, it was clear that in countries other than Indonesia, the count could still rise. Five days after the tsunami, there were fears that hundreds or possibly thousands of corpses might still be undiscovered in Khao Lak, a Thai resort area that was devastated. Even the few heartwarming tales of survival--of children reunited with their parents after days spent apart--were overlaid with grief. Marko Karkkainen, a Swedish man hospitalized...