Senate panel seeks improvements to tsunami warning system

With nearly 85 percent of tsunamis occurring in the Pacific Ocean and predictions that 75 percent of Americans will live in coastal communities by 2025, a Senate committee met Wednesday to explore the accuracy, robustness and reliability of the system to warn about tsunamis.

After the Dec. 26 tsunami that devastated many countries along the Indian Ocean, Congress and President Bush issued an urgent call to examine and improve the U.S. tsunami warning system. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, later introduced a measure, S. 50, designed to improve the detection, warning and notification system in the United States.

"We must study carefully the nature of the threat of tsunami, assess our capacity for detecting and forecasting these natural disasters, and make a plan that both makes sense and is sustainable over time," he said during a hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Inouye is the top Democrat on the panel.

Several federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, U.S. Geological Survey and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), have roles in the system.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates six deep-ocean assessment and reporting of tsunami (DART) buoys in the Pacific that can measure and detect deep-ocean movement and immediately send data to warning centers in Hawaii and Alaska in real time, said Brig. Gen. John Kelly, a deputy undersecretary of Commerce at NOAA.

But three of those along the Aleutian Channel are not operational, OSTP Director John Marburger said. They are down due to factors such as weather and malfunctioning components, he said. One has been down since October 2003, with two others going down in late 2004.

NOAA plans to install 32 new DART buoys in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and Caribbean Sea by mid-2007. "No other country has developed technology like this," Kelly said.

"I don't want to minimize the DART technology," he added, but even though three buoys are currently down, they are not the only essential part of the warning system.

"Tsunami preparedness involves a number of things," Kelly said, including 100 percent real-time assessment of seismic and oceanographic data, high-speed analysis and communication systems and "an established local communications infrastructure."

Inouye's legislation calls for improved federal, state and international coordination for issuing tsunami warnings and establishing safe zones for people impacted by a potential disaster. The measure also calls for advanced mapping, geospatial and communications technologies.

Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, asked each of the agencies to report within two weeks on how best to establish a warning system to notify emergency personnel, the emergency broadcast system, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Weather Channel.

The most important part of the warning system is strong communications and education systems for the people who receive the warnings, Kelly said. "In the final analysis," he said, "the action will have to take place in the local community."