At 12:06 PM 1/4/05 -0500, John Kelsey wrote:

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From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv@cdc.gov> 3. Homebrew warning systems will face the same problems as eg pro volcano warning systems: too many false alarms and no one cares.

The best defense would seem to be a population with a lot of TVs and radios. At least after the first tsunami hit, the news would quickly spread, and there were several hours between when the waves arrived at different shores. (And a 9.0 earthquake on the seafloor, or even a 7.0 earthquake on the seafloor, is a rare enough event that it's not crazy to at least issue a "stay off the beach" kind of warning.)

Actually, people should know this as *background* in the same way that you know not to stand in open fields during lightening, play with downed powerlines, or walk into tail rotors. I think some places have signs pointing to higher elevations, with wave-glyphs. I know that FLA has signs like that for hurricane storm-surges, and there are tornado signs in the midwest. The rational explanation, I suppose, is that tsunami are so rare that the knowledge is not maintained. (How many 'Merkins would know how to construct a nukebomb shelter these days? How many SoCal'ians know how to drive on icy roads?) Of course, broadcast media are used to tell people the obvious, eg don't play in channellized rivers during storms, and the evolution of the species suffers slightly but not entirely from the caveats.