2 Buoys In Pacific's Tsunami Warning System Broken

[kurtyboy]

http://www.komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=34796

SEATTLE - A network of expensive tsunami detection buoys off the West Coast could offer better protection against devastating waves like the one that struck in the Indian Ocean - if they all worked.

Of the six buoys placed throughout the Pacific Ocean, two near Alaska have been broken for 14 months, said Greg Romano, spokesman for the National Weather Service, the branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that maintains the network. One off the coast of Washington broke in November and is now being repaired.

Scientists offer assurances that despite the breakdown they can rely on information gathered by earthquake sensors and tide gauges.

"We are still a fully functional warning system, even without the buoys," Paul Whitmore, chief scientist for the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, told The Seattle Times. "The impact of those buoys being out is that we have less data upon which to cancel or expand warnings."

I wonder where the money to repair this warning system went! Maybe to a non-fuctional antiballistic missile system????

[Up2Late]

1. 4 buoys 6 buoys, Bla, Bla, Bla....

You know how many THOUSANDS of Dollars it would take to FIX 2 Buoys?:crazy::evilgrin:

Folks, We got BILLIONS of Dollars in Kick Backs to pay to my Buddies in Texas:silly:

[Old and In the Way]

2. While the upside is, from this admiministration's perspective......

the coast would be a lot less bluer....

Really, I agree with the poster above. We spend billions for a defense shield that's neither needed nor works....but we don't fix the things that'd really protect us against a natural disaster? The recent tsunami ought to be a wake-up call to our government about priorities...

[kurtyboy]

4. According to the article, each buoy costs only

a quarter million. For the cost of running the DOD for TWENTY SECONDS!!!! (literally, the DOD consumes over three quarters of a million dollars--$779,320---each minute), we can have a brand new warning buoy.

Seems reasonable to me to divert a few seconds worth of Defense from the evil Shiites and Sunnis and toward a legitimate natural threat that just wiped out at least a sixth of a million people.

But what the Hell do I know?

ON EDIT--Did you catch the first line of the article that calls the buoys "expensive"???? They seem pretty cheap to me!

[sandnsea]

3. Oh I am just RUNNNNIINGGGG!!!!!

I used to have some faith in this system, if a tsunami was more than an hour out. BUT NOW, fuck this. I am just getting the hell off the coast when there's big earthquakes up here. How in the hell can we have broken buoys for months on end????? Ungoddamnbelievable.