Tsunumi Warning.

Hi,

A vessel deep sea is the safest place to be when one of these bad boys comes along, they are not very large when far from shore at all.

Here is how it is going in NZ at the moment.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3384728/Tsunami-alert-for-New-Zealand-after-massive-Chile-quake

Recent word from friends in Hawaii reports a 'non-event'
5 and 6' waves at Diamond Head. "Normal day in paradise" per him, other than the sirens going off from 11PM last night until this afternoon.

We are in Hana right now on the Eastern point of Maui. The house I am staying at is about 15 feet from the water and also happens to be one of the lowest homes on the street at about 3' above the water. We were told to leave this morning by the Hana police because they were expecting 12-15' waves. (last night was our first night here) we left for higher ground until about 1:00 pm when we returned. The largest waves on our beach measured 5' and washed rocks, wood, coconuts and worms onto the street and up our driveway. The rental cars don't like driving on washed up lava rocks...
Our thoughts and prayers go to the families who lost so much today.

Dan

Indeed YN.
My friends on the big island said there was quite a bit of activity in evac. and so on, but as far as water / waves / etc. it was a non-event.

Better safe than sorry is always a good rule of thumb. It rarely fails.

And now some people are whining because it was a false alarm. Probably the same people who if they lost everything in an actual tsunami would be whining, "No one told us what to do!".

False alarms have a cost too. You cannot be "on" 100% of the time, and while this alarm had no direct cost, next time one goes off people will be less inclined to evacuate and if it's worse then people will die. Being the one who sounds the Alarm is a loosing proposition, it's very difficult and doing it wrong does damage.

I understand false alarms. I lived for 20 years under threat of hurricanes in St. Croix and Florida. I've spent all day putting shutters on my house to try and make it safe only to have the storm veer at the last minute. I didn't whine because the Hurricane Warning was false, I was thankful my house was unhurt. Most people I've known from Alaska were pretty self reliant and understood that ultimately you are responsible for your personal safety.

The thing about that analogy is that after the storm veered away they didn't keep the are evacuated. They should have been telling people to stay off the beeches and out of estuaries, Running the sirens all night the night before was doubtlessly overkill. They knew within hours that it was going to be a minor problem for the rest of the pacific, they should have responded as if it was going to be like they knew it was going to be.

You have a point. I'm sure to the bureaucrats involved it was a CYA type of situation. As you said, being the one responsible for issuing the warning is a lose-lose type of situation.

You're never going to make everyone happy.
Once you realize that, you and the world get along a lot better.

One of my engineers just got back from the Phillipines, said they had some loss of life as the surge came up the rivers and estuaries as that's basically where all the squatters make their home/camps.