Devastating<\/a>:<\/p>\n Massive tidal waves triggered by the largest earthquake to shake the planet in over 40 years have wiped out coastal areas across southeastern Asia as far as 1,000 miles away, killing nearly 3,000 people — most of them in Sri Lanka and India.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fifth largest earthquake since 1900. Scientific information on the earthquake available here<\/a>. In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said US officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami. Granted, these weren’t developed areas. But it seems like some manner of warning could have been issued by radio stations or something. Even a few minutes of warning could have saved hundreds of people. Devastating: Massive tidal waves triggered by the largest earthquake to shake the planet in over 40 years have wiped out coastal areas across southeastern Asia as far as 1,000 miles away, killing nearly 3,000 people — most of them in Sri Lanka and India. Fifth largest earthquake since 1900. Scientific information on the earthquake available […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nUPDATE: The scope of this disaster is difficult to comprehend. And frankly, I’m somewhat reluctant to try. Entire villages washed away. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people simply vanished into the water, never to be seen again.
\nWe can’t control nature; we only control our response. An event generating this many deaths naturally raises the issue of preparedness<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\nBut there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s centre in Honolulu.
\n“It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get … to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia,” he said.
\n“You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area.
\n“We tried to do what we could,” he said.
\n“We don’t have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nOn this side of the globe, most of the initial reporting on the earthquakes could only be found on the Internet. First day TV news coverage was dreadful. MSNBC and Fox News gave this story less air time than a big snow storm, and CNN wasn’t much better. Only now is CNN offering American viewers it’s International feed. Not sure where it was before. We’re talking about an event that killed several times as many people as 9\/11. And it’s had to fight for broadcast time with news of Christmas airline flight delays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"