Tsunami

This photograph shows tourists literally running for their lives from a tsunami wave in Asia December, 2004. After discussing such waves in class today I was interested to see more footage. After watching many videos I realized that most of them show people standing around staring at the waves. It is terrible that they had absolutely no warning at all. This photograph shows people running at the last minute. Many people thought the waves looked like interesting big waves coming toward them and did not realize just how big and dangerous they were. I am sure that after such events, major research projects and warning systems have been set up in the area. However, before the 2004 tsunamis, no such tracking/warning station was set up. It makes me wonder what sort of losses could have been avoided if there had been more warning. Although there had been no recent destructive waves in the area prior to these events, there are records and signs of massive destructive waves along many coastlines from many years ago. If they were possible then, and seismic activity triggers them, which we already knew, another destructive event was clearly possible. It is unfortunate that it took such a catastrophe to occur for more research and planning projects to go into the this area of ocean.