WITHOUT WARNING
Well over a hundred thousand people have died during the last few day of this year. The tsunami caused by the eruption of a volcano under the Indian Ocean brought death and destruction through a series of water which swept into eleven different nations without warning in most areas.
Certainly this disaster will bring about some changes in our ways of predicting the course of such unusual storms. Our weather people do a fine
job as it is in forecasting the usual storms and changes in weather conditions, but this situation involves a combination of detailed knowledge about vulcanology as well as some very special combinations of fine-tuning and logistics for it to be effective within the short span of warning time available.
We have facilities for doing such a job quickly and efficiently. Using the present system of seismographic images we can pinpoint the epicenter of the quake, and within moments, have either manned or unmanned aircraft over the site taking photographs TV footage and gathering statistical aids such a temperatures, wind directions, and make some judgments as to the velocity the storm will have. Waves were estimated moving at around six hundred mile per hour in this week tsunami and few coastal town are not constructed to take that sort of punishment. Such information can be instantly transmitted to ships at sea in the area as well as to coastal installations.
Lest you get the idea all of this is something for people who live afar off, may I remind you that reputable geologists tell us that a major - they have used the term "gigantic" - geological fault is located just a hundred or so miles off the coast of Virginia.
Imagine what it might be like if such a fault should shift suddenly. Fatal wave could sweep[p on Hampton Roads and destroy everything in sight; they could billow up and crossover low-lying Eastern Shore in to the Chesapeake Bay and come to roiling halt in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. The Northern Neck of the Old Dominion would be radically changed; Richmond would seem odd as coastal port for time; and to the south the Outer Banks would be stripped, torn apart and scattered over Charlemagne Sound. The Great Dismal Swamp would become an inland salt sea.
Thus far, we haven't even touched on the number of human lives place in peril! Whatever you write down about such a day it is going to read like a kindergarten exercise some day.
What do you know about such a fault in the Atlantic waters just off of our shores? Shouldn't we be told? What about early warning plans, if needed? Better yet, will a complete study of the alleged fault show it be benign and harmless? Why not make that a special wish for our New Year of 2005!
A.L.M. December 31, 2004 [c484wds]
