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[igotthisguitar]

Expert: I tried to warn of tsunami
Monday, January 3, 2005 Posted: 6:33 AM EST (1133 GMT)

PHUKET, Thailand (Reuters) -- A Thai expert says he tried to warn the government a deadly tsunami might be sweeping towards tourist-packed beaches, but couldn't find anyone to take his calls.

Samith Dhammasaroj said Monday he was sure a tsunami was coming as soon as he heard about the massive Dec. 26 earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra island that measured magnitude 9.0 -- the world's biggest in 40 years.

"I tried to call the director-general of the meteorological office, but his phone was always busy," Samith said as he described his desperate attempts to generate an alert which might have saved thousands of lives.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/01/03/tsunami.warning.reut/index.html

[peppermint]

It sucks, but it's hard to be surprised. An event of this magnitude is so unexpected- particularly in that region that the guy would probably be treated as a paranoid lunatic.

This part of the world( the Pacific rim) is at a much higher risk actually. To all you coastal people out there:

if you see the tide go waaaaaaaay out- don't look, RUN!

[fandeath]

Honestly, I would have found it hard to believe him. Yes, he looks good after the fact, but we don't know if he had several false alarms prior to this disaster.

[mindmetoo]

[matthewwoodford]

Not really, he predicted that the huge quake occurring under the sea would cause a tsunami, a connection that is well-established. It's not as if he'd predicted the date of the quake itself, something which would look very unreliable. The window of opportunity to warn people on the morning of December 26 must have been pretty small anyway.

[fandeath]

I think actions speak louder than words. If he truly believed the tsunami was coming...was he at the beach/radio stations/TV trying to warn people. It seems he was only contacting the government. He could have did more if he sincerley believed it.

Remember how Roy Sheider warned people at the beach in Jaws. Now there is a good effort.

[igotthisguitar]

Tuesday March 08, 2005

Tsunami Bomb NZ's Devastating War Secret

30.06.2000
By Eugene Bingham

Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal.

An Auckland University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944 and 1945.

Professor Thomas Leech's work was considered so significant that United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb.

Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Papers stamped "top secret" show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too. They even considered sending Professor Leech to Bikini Atoll to view the US nuclear tests and see if they had any application to his work.

He did not make the visit, although a member of the US board of assessors of atomic tests, Dr Karl Compton, was sent to New Zealand.

"Dr Compton is impressed with Professor Leech's deductions on the Seal project and is prepared to recommend to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that all technical data from the test relevant to the Seal project should be made available to the New Zealand Government for further study by Professor Leech," said a July 1946 letter from Washington to Wellington.

Professor Leech, who died in his native Australia in 1973, was the university's dean of engineering from 1940 to 1950.

News of his being awarded a CBE in 1947 for research on a weapon led to speculation in newspapers around the world about what was being developed.

Though high-ranking New Zealand and US officers spoke out in support of the research, no details of it were released because the work was on-going.

A former colleague of Professor Leech, Neil Kirton, told the Weekend Herald that the experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami.

Small-scale explosions were carried out in the Pacific and off Whangaparaoa, which at the time was controlled by the Army.

It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s.

The bomb was never tested on a full scale, and Mr Kirton doubts that Aucklanders would have noticed the trials.

"Whether it could ever be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I think it could be devastating."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=14727

[EFLtrainer]