Improvements reported in tsunami alert system
All-day staffing and more detection buoys should speed forecasts
The United States is better prepared to respond to a tsunami threat along its coasts, thanks to major improvements in warning systems, federal officials say.
Retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad Lautenbacher, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator, said, "All facets of NOAA's tsunami program -- from research to operations -- have been expanded. The result is a nation more prepared to act should a tsunami threaten our shores."
Among the improvements, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Ewa Beach and the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center are now staffed around the clock instead of by paging off-duty staff.
Other improvements to the warning systems were announced in a NOAA news release today and described at a talk yesterday closing a week-long meeting of about 8,000 members of the Risk Insurance Management Society.
Speaking to the group at the Hawai'i Convention Center, Jeff LaDouce, National Weather Service Pacific Region director, said there were only six Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis buoys in December 2004. The network now has 11 tsunami-detection buoys in the Pacific with instruments on the ocean floor, including one in Hawaii, he said. Chile also has one, and there are five others in the Caribbean and North Atlantic.
LaDouce said 32 more buoys are planned around the Pacific Rim, and seven in the Caribbean and Atlantic, to detect tsunami waves as they travel across the ocean.
Sensors on the ocean floor send data to satellites via the buoys, and all the new stations installed have advanced two-way satellite communication.
With data from the ocean instruments and tsunami-impact forecast models, LaDouce said, "we can forecast what that wave may be."
New tsunami-impact forecast models were to be completed by today for nine major American coastal communities at high risk for tsunamis, NOAA said. Inundation and evacuation maps were created for emergency managers from research models and used to help warning centers forecast tsunamis.
Forecast models are planned for 74 U.S. coastal sites, including one for Hawaii that is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
LaDouce said the goal is to improve accuracy and speed in detecting and forecasting a tsunami, especially for areas like Hawaii, with a short warning time in case of a tsunami generated by a Big Island earthquake.
Government officials in the United States and around the world have put a greater emphasis on tsunami preparedness since the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people.
NOAA received $17.2 million in supplemental funding for 2004-2005 and $9.67 million for 2005-2006 to expand the warning system. The president's budget for the next fiscal year requests about $21 million to finish the plan.
