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March 1 2010 TSUNAMI LESSONS NOT LEARNED? Yesterday’s (February 28 2010) massive Magnitude 8.8 Chile earthquake triggered a tsunami alert across the entire Pacific Ocean. Here on Majuro, near the center of the Pacific, we knew big waves were likely headed our way, but had no way to know if they were the massive killer waves that killed 300,000 people in the eastern Indian Ocean on December 26 2004, or if they would be minor. Here in the Marshall Islands, an atoll nation of around 1200 tiny islands with an average height no more than 2 meters above high tide, there is no high ground to run to, and even a fairly small wave could have swept over every island. That happened in the Maldives in the Indian Ocean tsunami, when the waves passed over every island, washing people out to sea. Most managed to swim back to land, but a hundred people were never found. All the groundwater was contaminated with salt, all the bananas (and mangoes on the only island large enough to grow them) died, and people had to wait a year or so for rainwater to flush the salt out before they could grow any food but coconuts again. The people of every single low lying island in the Pacific have clear memories of terrible times when waves washed clean over their island, when most of the population was carried away, and only a lucky few survived, many by lashing themselves with coconut fibre ropes to breadfruit trees. In many places they can name the date, sometimes this was only a few years or decades ago and the memories are fresh, in other places they lie way back in the times of their grandparents or grandparents’ grandparents, but they are still remembered in oral tradition even though the actual dates are lost. In some cases they lie so far back in time that they have been mythologized as events that happened to the gods. There is probably NO low island without such a tradition. In Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands, we learned early yesterday morning that a tsunami alert had been called for the entire Pacific. The earthquake in Chile was stronger than the one that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami. But there is no strong correlation between earthquake strength and tsunamis, very strong earthquakes may have no tsunamis at all. The key is whether they take place along steeply sloping sediments that can undergo sudden landslides. These conditions are common in both Indonesia and Chile, so all we could do was wait and see what happened to other places nearer to Chile as guide.
Hawaii, 3,000 kilometers away, was due to be hit around 2 hours earlier. US TV stations available on satellite links in the Marshall Islands were fixated on Hawaii, large islands where the risk is small because there is plenty of high ground to run to. They never once mentioned any of the atoll islands or their extreme vulnerability. Whether the entire population of the atoll islands lived or died would be of far less importance to the US news media than a few luxury yachts sunk in a Hawaiian harbor with no loss of life. We could see live footage from Honolulu, and when we finally saw how small the waves were, we knew we had lucked out too. We would not risk being killed two hours later. This was fortunate, because the Marshall Islands sat directly in the middle of the most intense high wave height (dark orange) tongue directly in front of the earthquake, while Hawaii lay to the northeast in a much lower wave height area (yellow). The most vulnerable low islands don’t even appear on NOAA’s tsunami map below, only high islands! We knew with two hours reprieve that we would not die that day and would see th next. Here there was no panic all. Small children played in the streets as usual. There were no lines in the stores. Most people probably never even knew their lives might be snuffed out. They are too poor to have cable TV bringing in foreign news. In Hawaii there were sirens blasting away. Here there was no public warning at all. As it turned out, the day of the tsunami alert we had strong winds and waves. On the eastern ocean side of Majuro, where I am living, directly facing the tsunami, the Trade Wind-driven waves were three to four feet high, and so the tsunami was barely noticeable because the waves. The day that began with drama and fear, among that small minority that happened to see the foreign TV (in my case while getting my morning coffee), passed without event, just another day in paradise. I was supposed to have been at the time not in Majuro, connected to global news media carrying the warnings, but at an outlying atoll, building wave, tidal current, wind, and solar powered shore protection projects to grow coral reefs and allow beaches to grow back on severely eroding islands that are highly threatened by global sea level rise. These islands had suffered catastrophic flooding by high tides that forced hundreds of people out of their homes and caused a national state of emergency a little more than a year ago. Had we been on an outer atoll we would not have been so lucky, for these islands have NO electricity, mail, telephones, or internet, so there would have been no way to know a tsunami was approaching until after it had already hit! Living to tell the tale because this alert turned out to be a false alarm was nothing more than sheer luck. Another smaller earthquake in Chile, or Hawaii, or any number of other locations could easily trigger a tsunami that would flow right over these islands and thousands of others. The fact that this tsunami did not materialize despite the alert will inevitably be interpreted by the religious as proof of a miracle by their god resulting from their own personal virtue, just as they viewed the Asian tsunami as divine retribution, that their god was punishing others for being sinful, in particular for worshipping other gods than their own. The sad fact is that here in the central Pacific no lessons were learned about the extreme vulnerability of these islands and the need to strengthen shore defenses by growing back coral reefs to protect their shores. And unfortunately these lessons will probably not be learned until there is a genuine catastrophe. Which will inevitably happen one day, sooner or later, but cannot be predicted in advance. When that happens we will once again be woefully unprepared, and the focus of global attention will once again be on the richest and least vulnerable inhabitants of high islands, and once again the poorest people on the low islands with no place to flee to, who will be the worst affected, will be forgotten. It’s just a matter of time.
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
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