Tsunami Timeline and Warnings
This presentation is viewable as Flash: Flash Presentation on Tsunami Warnings.
Here’s the Powerpoint:Tsunami Warnings and How We Can Listen
This is the presentation I was illustrating for ThaTha. It’s as yet unfinished but I’m putting it here so he can look at it from Manila. It’s about the warnings we did have and what we could do better. Besides never going to the beach again. All the information herein is from Rohan Samarajiva and www.lirneasia.net. The timeline and all. I just illustrated it. For the record, I don’t own Powerpoint and I did this in OpenOffice. It exports to PowerPoint, PDF, and – surprisingly – Flash. It’s a little geeky to use so I dunno if I recommend it, but that’s really cool that I can make Flash files like that.
This is the basic timeline. I exported the full version to HTML here: Tsunami Timeline
7:00 AM: Indonesia Reports Earthquake
7:05 AM: Colombo Gets Quake Report
7:14 AM: Honolulu Earthquake Bulletin
7:30 AM: Tsunami Hits Sumatra
8:04 AM: Honolulu Tsunami Warning
8:27 AM: Tsunami Hits Kalmunai
8:55 AM: Tsunami Hits Trinco, Batticaloa, more
9:30 AM: Tsunami Hits Galle, Kalutara, more
What’s awful is that we had warnings in Sri Lanka as early as 7:05 AM local time. The first wave didn’t hit Kalmunai till 8:30. I’m not saying that anyone is to blame, besides the Minister with the Natural Disasters Portfolio – who should rightly be sacked. There’s a funny joke going around where someone calls the Prime Minister about a Tsunami and he sends a car to the airport to pick up a T. Sunami. It’s extra funny cause he tells that joke. The thing is that nobody really knew, I didn’t understand for days. But we have to do better next time, for any disaster.
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
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The flash presentation is awesome! If you add audio of crashing waves, it may almost play like a scary movie.
totally agree. could i borrow them?
[...] still doesn’t have a credible disaster warning system (besides SMS news alerts). This is a timeline of the events that led up to the tsunami: 7:00 AM: Indonesia Reports Earthquake 7:05 AM: Colombo [...]
[...] warning. So again, please stay away from the beach. Will post more as I find out. Here’s the timeline from last time: 7:00 AM: Indonesia Reports Earthquake 7:05 AM: Colombo Gets Quake Report 7:14 AM: Honolulu [...]