Was it really without warning?

[Deja Q]

http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2004/12/30asia.html

“We tried to do what we could”

Despite the biblical scale of floods and destruction, the death along the Indian Ocean coastline was no ‘Act of God’.
Jon Dale - Socialist Party (England and Wales)

It was not inevitable that an earthquake beneath the sea, 600 miles from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, would lead to the loss of more than 100,000 lives over the following hours. Had a warning system been set up, most could have been saved. Even without an Indian Ocean-based warning system, if the Pacific-based system had communicated with effective national and regional emergency response teams, the disaster would have been far less deadly.

Earthquakes are unpredictable events, caused by the movement of tectonic plates of the earth’s crust against each other sending out shock-waves. Although the exact time cannot be foreseen, the likelihood of earthquakes occurring in some parts of the world can be estimated. Major earthquakes have occurred before under the Indian Ocean. One scientist has estimated their frequency as pairs every 230 years, with the last in 1833. There have been smaller earthquakes since, although some have been quite destructive.
Tsunami is predictable

Although no early warning system can predict the timing of an earthquake, a tsunami is predictable. An earthquake below the ocean floor sets up waves of water that move at speeds of 500-700 kilometres/hour. Their height may be as little as a centimetre, but when these waves reach shallow water they slow down and grow in height and destructive power.

(snip)

Thammasarote Smith, a former senior forecaster at Thailand's Meteorological Department, said governments could have done much more to warn people of the danger. "The department had up to an hour to announce the emergency message and evacuate people, but they failed to do so," he told The Bangkok Post. "It is true that an earthquake is unpredictable, but a tsunami - which occurs after an earthquake – is (predictabe)."

Chcheep Mahachan of the Thailand seismological bureau said “A proper warning was not given. If we had given the warning and then it hadn’t happened, then it would have been the death of tourism in those areas.” The bureau chief, Sulamee Prachuab, said, “Five years ago, the meteorological department issued a warning of a possible wave after an earthquake in Papua New Guinea, but the tourism authority complained that such a warning would hurt tourism.” (Guardian 29.12.04) Capitalism’s need for profits takes precedence over human safety.

Article has much more.