Words That Have Meaning: False Alarm and Warning (A Tsunami Wrap-up)

This was a false alarm? Photographs from CBS News and AP

Two situations:

In the first, it's a school day, and some kid pulls the fire alarm. Bells ring and students have to evacuate even though there is no evidence of a fire and everyone knows it was a prank. This is a false alarm.

In the second, a teller pushes the alarm button. There's a man demanding money. No one knows if the man is armed or not. The police evacuate the neighborhood, surround the bank, and ultimately arrest the man. If the man turns out to be unarmed, it makes the whole thing a false alarm, right? No? I don't think so either. The police and the people of the neighborhood were warned of a possible dangerous situation. There could have been a deadly shootout. Will anyone fault the police for doing their job?

So why are scientists being forced to defend themselves for their warnings about a tsunami? Just because the tsunami proved to have less violence than expected doesn't mean they should have acted any differently. The media bean-counters are probably sorry they didn't get the death and disaster in Hawaii and other Pacific Islands that would have driven up ratings (sorry for the cynicism), but the seismologists did nothing improper. And I was personally impressed that Hawaiians and others did such a fine job of responding. They know from experience what could have happened. And in the end, there was a tsunami that extended from Chile all the way to Japan where the pictures above were taken. There was a fine line between an interesting geologic event and a worldwide disaster. There is disaster enough in Chile, where the death toll continues to climb.

With that in mind, I'm glad to see the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is not caving in to media accusations of a "false alarm":

"It's a key point to remember that we cannot under-warn. Failure to warn is not an option for us," said Dai Lin Wang, an oceanographer at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. "We cannot have a situation that we thought was no problem and then it's devastating. That just cannot happen."

The media should know better than to loosely toss the words "false alarm" in their wrap-up stories about the tsunami. Words have meaning, and "false alarm" sends the wrong message, a sort of "boy who cried wolf" attitude. Millions of people across the Pacific have now experienced an evacuation, and will know what to do the next time. Unless they think of the seismologists as boys crying wolf. These men and women take their jobs seriously, and will never play such games with the public.

Don't forget to donate to relief efforts in Chile, and in Haiti. It's so easy to forget a tragedy when another one crowds out the headlines.

UPDATE: Word starts creeping out about devastating tsunami damage in Chile

UPDATE #2: More people may have been killed in Chile by the tsunami than by the earthquake itself. Magma Cum Laude provides a nice example of good media coverage on the tsunami, with Dr. Chuck Bailey at William and Mary College. Nice catch!

UPDATE #3: Earth Magazine checks in with a good analysis of the quake and tsunami and links to some excellent media coverage by PBS News Hour (and thanks for the shout out for Geotripper, Magma Cum Laude, and Goodschist!)

The Hawaii Tsunami a "Non-Event"? I Don't Think So...

I know that the Hawaii tsunami is now officially old news, but it was an important geological lesson. Why does it take amateur video to adequately explain what was happening? As I watched cable news yesterday, the activity was hidden by screen banners and obscured by blathering newsreaders who didn't have enough knowledge to realize what was happening on the screen in front of them. I've been complaining about it for the last 24 hours, so I thought I should mention what incredible things we did see yesterday.

It boils down to the fact that there was a very thin line between a geologic curiosity and a geologic disaster in Hawaii yesterday. Think what a remarkable thing was happening in the video: a normally placid ocean bay protected from wave action by a long sea wall was suddenly full of mud, and was flowing. First one direction, then the other. How extraordinary is this?

Normal waves are a surface phenomena. Anyone playing in the waves at the beach knows they can avoid being mashed by a big wave by diving under it. The waves form up only a few hundred feet offshore and break against the beach. They involve a limited part of the water column, and the energy level, while high at the point of impact, is also limited. The swells that form up into waves may be generated hundreds or thousands of miles away by storm winds, but the swells travel only a few tens of miles an hour, and the turbulence extends only a few tens of feet beneath the surface of the ocean.

Tsunamis are not at all like normal waves. They are generated by a displacement of the water on the ocean floor by large earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or underwater landslides. They travel hundreds of miles an hour (roughly the speed of a jet airliner), and they affect the entire water column from the seafloor to the surface. They don't even really affect boats on the open ocean, as the boats simply rise and fall a few feet over a twenty minute time span. But the seafloor is affected by the passage. The dangerous aspect of a tsunami is what happens when the waves encounter shallow water along a shoreline. In essence, the energy of the wave that has been dispersed across the whole water column is compressed into a smaller and smaller space. The wave builds, and either draws water away from the coast, or surges into the coast without warning.

The activity at Hilo Bay is a wonderful example of the process. All the water in the bay was in motion, from the surface to the base, and this is what kicked up all the mud in the water. The water was surging in and then out again, explaining the strange currents around Coconut Island, seen in the video above. The total height of the tsunami surge was about three feet.

This was a huge earthquake in Chile, the fifth largest ever recorded. It was reasonable to expect a colossal tsunami, but tsunamis are subject to many variables. Smaller earthquakes have generated larger tsunamis in Hawaii (the worst tsunami to strike Hawaii, in 1946, was from a smaller earthquake that took place in Alaska). The largest earthquake ever recorded, from Chile in 1960, produced a devastating tsunami in Hilo, but the second largest, the Alaska quake of 1964 (magnitude 9.3) caused all of $60,000 in damage and killed no one in Hawaii (16 people died in California and Oregon, and 106 in Alaska). In other words, tsunamis are inherently unpredictable. In the worst tsunamis, of 1946 and 1960, the surge reached depths of 30 feet or more.

A warning system has been present in the Pacific Ocean basin since 1946, and the system was upgraded in the last few years, but has only been tested in a few recent large seismic events.

What I really wish is that the newreaders (er, um, excuse me, anchorpersons and reporters) at the cable networks would take the time to truly educate themselves in the basics of geology. As a teacher of geology, I shiver at the thought of standing up in a classroom of philosophy students and lecturing on philosophy without any time to prepare. These newspeople are standing up in front of millions of people and displaying their appalling ignorance of geology. The other problem, of course, is that their audience is not aware of it.

UPDATE: Chris at goodSchist is collecting some of the mainstream media crimes against geologic understanding here. Be sure to contribute if you see something!

I Have a Dream...in which the 24 Hour Cable News Networks Serve a Useful Purpose

Photo of tsunami surge from West Hawaii Today

I have a dream, or more a fantasy, because dreams are more likely to come true. I fantasize about the day that a cable network newsreader (I know they like to call themselves "anchorpeople", but forget it) stands up in front of the television cameras and says, "I'm sorry, but I and the entire news team in this room and on the site of the geological event out there haven't got the faintest idea of what we are babbling about. So we are going to suspend our coverage until we have hired a correspondent who has the scientific education to give us a cogent and reasoned explanation of what is going on."

My dream isn't going to come true, is it? As I noted yesterday, the networks will spend tens of millions of dollars to cover minute aspects of sporting events, but they can't shell out, say, $90,000 a year to a competent geologist/earth scientist who can warn them that they have gone overboard on the hype, and to calm down.

What was the real story yesterday? There was a massive earthquake in Chile yesterday, an 8.8 magnitude monster that was the fifth biggest tremor in recorded (i.e. on a seismometer) history. It produced a tsunami that would affect the entire Pacific Ocean basin. The coverage of the earthquake itself earns the news networks a C+, because they apparently still remember some of the science they learned six weeks ago in Haiti.

But...their coverage of the effects of the quake on the Pacific Basin and Hawaii? An F. Not even a gentleman's F+. They've done grievous damage to the entire concept of responsible journalism. They hated that the Indonesian tsunami struck without warning so that they couldn't plan for their coverage of a tragic human event. So this quake hits, and they have a half day's warning to prepare for the event in Hawaii. They were so incompetent that they could position stationary cameras in what seemed to be only three locations (including what seemed hours of pictures of one moronic surfer), and then breathlessly babbled for hours about the approaching maelstrom. The tsunami arrived, and they didn't recognize it happening in front of them. Then they acted disappointed that it wasn't the disaster they had been building up for hours. And they cut to commercials. This, of course, is what I was raging about yesterday.

The story they missed? A giant earthquake produced what could very well have been a colossal tsunami. The civil defense apparatus of the state of Hawaii gears up for the event, sounding the warning sirens hours ahead of the arrival of the tsunami surge, and doing an incredible job of warning the population of what could be coming. The people of Hawaii do the right thing, stocking up on emergency supplies and taking shelter in the appropriate locations. The evacuations run smoothly, from what little I hear, and if a monster tsunami had hit, the death toll would have been very low. The tsunami hits with an intensity at the lower end of the predictions, and a number of fascinating phenomena take place (and I am still waiting for some decent coverage of what actually happened). There was a collective sigh of relief, and life returns to normal, after a brief interruption and a little inconvenience. That was the real story, and it was for the most part untold.

The damage they have done? By building up the story to a fever pitch, they could have caused unnecessary panic and worry, and when they expressed their disappointment (in their attitude, if not their words) at the outcome, they set up a situation in the future where people might not take tsunami warnings seriously. They have turned this into a "Peter cries Wolf" story in which the civil defense people actually seem to be apologizing for overestimating the size of the waves (and please follow and read the link). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has nothing to apologize for; they acted appropriately for the situation, and the population responded well. I can only pray that in future events they will also respond correctly.

My friend at Phreatic Ramblings captures a particularly inane conversation that took place yesterday. I normally like Rick Sanchez if he is talking about politics, but he didn't do so well here.

UPDATE: Sorry Rick, but your cartography ain't so good either (Thanks, Rebecca)

What? You Were Expecting This?

If you were watching the coverage of today's tsunami in the Pacific Ocean basin, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was what was converging on Waikiki, given the breathless reporting that took place on the cable networks. This photo began life as a photoshop effort that circulated on the internet in the days following the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami of 2004. It wasn't enough that the tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Indian Ocean. Someone had to try and make it seem bigger (if someone actually wants to admit owning a copyright to the photo, let me know and I will take it down if you wish).

I began the day being somewhat impressed with the quality of the discussion of the massive earthquake in Chile. Some of the newsreaders displayed some level of knowledge about just how big the quake was (the 5th largest ever recorded in the last hundred years or so) and something of how quakes are assessed and measured. But then the scene shifted to Hawaii and I became more and more disillusioned.

What a wonderful opportunity to educate an audience on the nature of geologic hazards and processes! A tsunami was coming and the story would unfold in front of the world. We would be able to see it happen and even better understand what was happening. What took place instead? Four or five wasted hours of breathless useless words, an unrealistic build-up to a climax that wasn't going to happen, and a near total misunderstanding of the extraordinary thing that did happen right there on the screen in front of us. The arrival of the tsunami was obscured by one of those ridiculous banners (which I could almost swear said "BREAKING STORY: HAWAII ABOUT TO WASH INTO THE SEA", but I could be mistaken). The newsreaders went on babbling, blithly unaware of what was happening on the screen. Because it wasn't killing anyone, I guess.

But I forget myself...of course television exists only to sell commercial products, and the only way products will be sold is if millions upon millions of people are watching. News is merely a means to an end, and the end has little to do with educating the public. But who am I to complain? I'm just a geologist and teacher who felt horribly disappointed today at what could have been.

I think about the Olympics I've been watching this week...tens of millions of dollars were spent designing a media extravaganza in which every aspect of every sporting event could be seen from three or four different camera angles. There seemed to be hundreds of expert commentators who could describe every single move made by every single athlete. Every triple-toe-lutz, every slalom turn.

But to describe a geologic event of worldwide importance and interest? With twelve hours of lead time, the networks got all of one camera pointed to Hilo Bay?? As far as I am concerned, the day was an epic fail by the news media.

I see little evidence that the cable networks employ even a single scientist. The only scientists ever in evidence are the "meteorologists" but does anyone think they were chosen for their expertise? Screen presence is everything, of course. Most of the weather people show a shocking ignorance of climate science and the issues involved in global warming and climate change. Of course when a volcano erupts or a fault slips to produce an earthquake, the network newsreaders interview volcanologists and geologists. But they almost never ask the right questions, and half the time they are looking for the answers that feed their preconceptions and the need to increase viewership.

Am I being too tough on the cable networks? What do you think?