Hi dean,

>>>>I bet they wish they had such system now. Probably would have saved many, many lives and millions of dollars.
>>
>>Of course, but that is only after the fact. No-one has foreseen this. How does this compare to the million people living in downtown San Fransisco. They know an disasterous earthquake could happen any day?
>
>Earthquakes are virtually unpredictable. But tsunamis happen because of some disturbance that happened hundred/thousands miles away so you can "see" it coming. Didn't they know they were living close to a fault line? - I don't know, maybe they didn't....

Most like they did not. And BTW it stil is a tremendous distance.

>>In asia all they had was 100 minutes. How would you save 100k people from drowning on a sunday morning in a non 1st world country with limited infrastructure? Those countries have much more to worry about than losing a couple of thousand citizens and tourists each 100 years because of disasters. It has never been a priority there.


>If they have money to build nuclear bombs in India, they have the money to install a simple warning system.

Pardon me, but IMO this typical a stupid american anwer (no personal insult intended). 911 might have been less disasterous if they simply locked up the door of the cockpit. They certainly could have done more on security regulations. One or two simple measures to prevent a disaster. Wisdom always comes after the facts. Whether it is a third world country or a first world country.

We don't have sharks in holland. We have no reports of shark attacks in whole europe. However there have been sharkes drained from fishermans nets in the miediterranean see. Do you think there are shark allerts systems on any european beach ?? Should we ??

>Lot of people can be evacuated in couple hours. In this case, all they had to do was to get to higher ground just a few blocks away. How many block can you walk walking four about thirty minutes?

As we speak now, they tal about 100K people died. I'm sure that when a perfect alarm system was in place a number of people could be saved.

HOWEVER, We are talking about a tremedous area. It happened while lots of people were asleep. Lots of tourist who do not speak the language. Lots of isolated places where virtually no infrastructure does exist even today.

I would be surprised that more than 30% could have been saved with a perfect alarming system. It would not have made this event less disasterous IMO.

>That's right but you can save a lot of lives. You're never going to save 100% of the people. There are always those that ignor the warnings, even in the US fr hurricanes. And you're right it is after the fact. But, it would be tragic if they didn't learn anything from this.

People in general are slow learners. And Time let people forget so easily.... Sad but true.

Walter,