Tsunamimania One suspects there is nothing the western media enjoys better than a big catastrophe. There is no doubt, it's a great feeling not to be a victim. Australian newspapers are still leading with the Boxing Day sea-quake, although none of them appear to be calling it that yet. I don’t think they actually have figured out what to call it. Of course the word tsunami features all the time. Tsunamimania? I said it first. We used to call them tidal waves but that term fell out of vogue maybe about twenty years ago. Our local TV stations have now dispatched their own voyeurs to various countries in the region. Their brief is to essentially cover two categories, Australians, and the places which have experienced the worst devastation, preferably with lots of dead bodies. They thrust their microphones under the nose of every Australian they come across and ask them how they feel about what happened. I would like some person to reply, “This is how it felt mate!” and then plant one right between a reporter’s eyes.
The news editors back home have complied a selection of the best action shots, all of which are mostly blurry and jerky. These are played back repeatedly. An aquatic version of September 11. The mortality figure climbs by the day, as do the media aphorisms. I thought one I saw today on page 8 of
The Australian took the pip, although it had originated from a woman called Libby Purves at Britain’s
The Times: “Yet in every disaster the effect is of a kicked ant’s nest, swarming to rebuild... The ants nest is at work... Ant-like activity, ceaseless communication, a mosaic of names and cultures. Terrible things will always happen and lives will be lost and blighted; but the ant heap goes to work.” I am going to nominate Ms Purves and
The Times for the “purple prose” award.
There has been an obscure claim that the Boxing Day event has altered the Earth’s orbit. But the notion seems to have come from an Italian scientist, so no one is taking much notice. But it seems reasonable that the planet might be wobbling on its axis a little. It may well have implications for the polar littorals too, which are already retreating fairly rapidly. Presumably the shock waves reached the Antarctic and gave the ice a little jostle. Shaken but not stirred?
The Australian government has announced that it is to initiate a tsunami warning network for the Indian Ocean. Politicians talking off-the-cuff about technological devices on the sea floor linked to a satellite network. I think this is probably just a political smokescreen. There is already sufficient technology to precisely identify almost immediately the location and magnitude of significant seismic events. Furthermore there are people who monitor these things continuously - i.e the Americans.
They demonstrated this with the Sumatra event. The real problem for Australia was the witless reaction here when the Americans had the courtesy to make a phone call. The solution is not to establish more automated undersea detectors, but to establish an effective chain of command whereby a risk assessment can be quickly made by a responsible human and promulgated directly to the Australian public communication network.
The decision would need to be at a high level and be backed by legislation to enforce verbatim transmission of an alert. The Boxing Day event serves to demonstrate the inadequacy of our defence network, just as the 9/11 events did for the US. What I mean to say is that is that it was the same sort of catastrophic surprise. Immense confusion followed, but in that confusion it emerged that there were indeed lone voices who had sounded warnings beforehand, but they were ignored.
Now of course everyone is getting in on the act. Australian university geologists are crawling out from under their holiday stones trying to establish their credibility in the media. The theory is that by putting one’s name to a warning hedges one’s bet for protection when there is the next disaster. No one will be able to ask them, “Why didn’t you say something?” As a result the residents of the Australian eastern seaboard have now been given the willies because someone has piped up and revealed that there is a massive fault lurking under the ocean near New Zealand and it could let rip at any time. Of course it might not happen for thousands of years - but on the other hand...
Suddenly land with high elevation has appeal. Goodbye to the baby boomer notion of making a “sea change.” Ocean is out, desert is in. Now it will be “desert change.” I predict a real-estate boom in Kalgoorlie.
Where we live we are probably safe from any regular tsunami. Inland about three kilometres from the ocean with a hill and deep valley in between. Even so we can plainly see the tops of wharf cranes at Fremantle harbour. One of my sons has a global positioning indicator which says we are about 29.5 metres above sea level. Is that all!!!!
But we are certainly not safe from super size tsunamis generated by “rogue” asteroids. I have no doubt that the Americans will save us from them on the premise that what is bad for us is also bad for them. After all, we have several KFC and McDonald outlets here. There has already been substantial consideration by the Americans that there might one day be the need, in the interests of economic expediency, to try to ward off one of God’s slingshots.
If they fail it would be better for a big asteroid to lob in the Pacific or Atlantic, rather than the Indian Ocean. But that won’t be their objective will it? No sireee. If all else fails, they would prefer the Indian Ocean. If that happens then my 29.5 metres of elevation might not be enough.
Therefore, be it known then that if the worst occurs, then I used to live at position 32 degrees, 02 minutes south latitude; 115 degrees 47 minutes east longitude. At least that is what my son's gadget claims.
© MMIV Paul R. Weaver.
About the writerCheck out the index of my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days.
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