The Science Behind a Tsunami’s Destructiveness

In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunamis, and with tectonic plates continuing to shift beneath the Indian Ocean, scientists are seeking answers to handle the next natural disaster.

Published June 1, 2005

By Sheri Fink, MD, PhD
Academy Contributor

Stunning images of devastation and soaring body counts dominated news coverage of last December’s tsunami, leaving one of the most important questions about the disaster barely addressed: Why did so many people die? With tectonic plates still shifting beneath the Indian Ocean, setting off new earthquakes almost daily, finding answers to this question is urgent.

Lareef Zubair is an associate research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and founder of the Sri Lanka Meteorology, Oceanography and Hydrology Network. He studies why disasters in some parts of the world tend to carry a much higher human, as opposed to financial, toll than disasters in other places – compare the thousands who die in a typical cyclone in Bangladesh with the 123 deaths caused by last year’s four hurricanes in Florida.

Zubair recently spoke at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) on a panel organized by Science Writers in New York (SWINY), an affiliate of the National Association of Science Writers, to discuss untold stories of the tsunami.

Disasters: Unequal Opportunity Killers

Destructive acts of nature impact human populations to varying degrees. “People who study disasters sort of separate out three aspects of disasters,” said Zubair. “One is the hazards, which is something like a flood, or lightening strike, or a tsunami, which is the physical or biophysical event itself. And then there is the exposure, the degree to which people are exposed to the hazard. The third thing is how vulnerable you are to that event.”

In Zubair’s home country of Sri Lanka, the tsunami restricted its wrath to the first several hundred meters adjacent to the water’s edge. The destruction coincided with areas of high population density. Not only those who eked out a living on the sea lived in close proximity to it, but also traders and farmers, despite regulations stipulating that construction within 300 meters of the shoreline be reviewed by the government. One reason people are drawn to the coast is that infrastructure such as roads, telephones, hospitals and schools have been developed there.

“The seashore has to be protected,” said Zubair. “Cyclones and flooding and storm surges happen at the seashore…every 10, 20, 30 years, and everybody knows this. But somehow that did not translate into the desired action of having people live in safer areas.”

Not only were people living along the seashore exposed to natural disasters, Zubair said, but because of the area’s depressed economy and 20-year history of civil war, they also were highly vulnerable to them. “Vulnerability…is grossly related [to] the distribution of wealth,” Zubair said. “How good are your houses, how good is the infrastructure, how good are the hospitals that are around so that you can get treatment? How good is the road system?” The answers in the tsunami-hit areas of Sri Lanka were, in most cases, “poor.”

A Failure of Prevention

On December 26, 2004, Sri Lanka’s National Disaster Management Center did not jump into action to mitigate the tsunami’s destructive effects. The country’s “Sunday Times” newspaper summed up the problem in a headline: “Only three phones, staff of 10, and never on a Sunday.” The tsunami had the bad manners to hit on the Sunday after Christmas. “How on earth [can you] have a national disaster management center that does not work on public holidays?” Zubair asked.

An hour elapsed between the tsunami’s first deadly landfall on the island’s eastern coast and its last lashing in the country’s northwest. In that time, an estimated 20,000 additional people died. Zubair believes that had a warning been broadcast to the rest of the country soon after the tsunami began hitting the coast – roughly one and a half hours after the earthquake – lives would have been saved.

“That should have happened,” said Zubair. “Any middle school student could see [that] if you have an earthquake hazard in the middle of the ocean, there is going to be a tsunami risk. You don’t need sophisticated scientists to come and tell you this. Why did people fail? And, why did people fail in Sri Lanka? Why did people fail in India? Lastly, why did people fail here? I don’t think we should push these questions under the carpet, as scientists.”

An Early Warning System

Zubair said he made his way to the “plush” part of Colombo to visit the disaster management center several times in the year prior to the tsunami, seeking to discuss early warning systems. He was offered tea, but never an audience with anyone willing to talk about technical issues. An early warning system had indeed been proposed after Sri Lanka’s 1978 cyclone. Plans were made, reports were written, money was disbursed, but the ideas were never implemented by the center. “They exist, with a name-board and a plaque, for donors,” he said, concluding that a “perverse incentive system” exists for those involved in disaster management and related fields.

“Every time there’s a disaster, they get rewarded with larger and larger amount of funds,” he said. “In countries such as Sri Lanka, fields like disaster management and energy conservation are seen as fields in which you can get foreign funds, opportunities for scholarships and maybe some sort of benefit. There’s no integration of the disaster management system itself into the internal networks of science, into the internal networks of education, into the internal networks of governments itself and disaster management.”

High Price of Neglecting Science

Sri Lanka’s Geological Survey and Mines Bureau possessed both a functioning seismograph and a 100-year scientific pedigree, but on December 26th it had no one working on site to analyze the seismic measurements. Data were sent instead to the Scripps Institute in San Diego. “The question is, why is it that you’re sitting on probably the most important piece of scientific data Sri Lanka ever recorded or needed and you just ship it off?”

The answer is controversial. Zubair traced it to the pressures of mounting foreign debt, which forced the bureau to shift its focus away from science to supporting commercial mining interests. “Because of the fact that the country is dependent…services that look after the safety of the population got converted into a service that helps repay debt,” he said. Hewing to World Bank and Sri Lanka’s central bank guidelines, the bureau did not have the authority to spend the roughly $2,000 needed to hire someone to monitor the seismograph.

In fact, $2,000 is the government’s entire yearly grant to Sri Lanka’s Academy of Sciences. “The investment of the Sri Lankan government in science is about .18% of GDP. It’s just miniscule. You should at least have 1% or 2%, because what you’re doing is investing in people, you’re investing in safety, in the future.”

Empowering Humanity

Zubair concluded that the death toll from the tsunami was in great part a function of unmitigated exposure and vulnerability of the population – factors he laid at the doorstep of a government that neglects science and technology, and international donor organizations that offer a shower of funds for emergency relief, but turn off the spigot for prevention efforts.

“The basic message here is we really should be talking about disaster preparedness and risk management,” he said. The goal is to integrate modern scientific and technological advancements with emergency preparedness and public education. “You can have policy, but there must be implementation and there must be good governance…governance that looks after the welfare of the people.”

Despite the failures, Zubair recalled that when he visited Sri Lanka a week after the disaster he came away with hope as well as frustration. At a time when the government and international agencies had not yet swung into action, he saw the local inhabitants themselves saving lives. “Church groups, community groups, temples, mosques, workplaces. It was like 9/11 here – extraordinary mobilization. It’s not a poor country in that sense.” The key, he says, is to support the “huge capacity of people.” Chief among them? The scientists.

Also read: Tsunami Relief Efforts: A Personal Account