False Alarms in Tsunami

Oceonographers issued a bulletin telling Hawaii and other Pacific islands including the Philippines that the tsunami is heading their way 1:00 PM last Saturday, February 27, 2010. But the devastating tidal wave didn’t came.

Scientists accepted that they have overstated the warning and threats, but it is just an act of being ready, saying that they have learned in 2004 Indonesian Tsunami that killed thousands of people who have not even given enough warning.

Hawaii, said to the the most tsunami ready places in the world. When an alert is issued, everyone is expected to the higher levels. But most of the time, no tsunami hits the shore. The false alarm is estimated to be 75 percent, and becoming the talk of the town today.
Tsunami warnings can be collected with a variety of information. The most common is the seismic readings: Monitoring the alert within minutes of an earthquake and can update magnitude from subsequent readings within an hour. But only a tiny percentage of undersea earthquakes cause dangerous tsunami, meaning subsequent readings from sea level monitors are crucial to forecasting big waves. And that data can take hours to arrive.

Amidst the false alarm of Tsunami in most Asian countries, it is still better to be prepared than to realize regrets at the end.