I think some people are more attuned to potential danger, while others are much more likely to let their curiosity get the better of them. Twice I've wanted to go straight into a perilous situation and my girlfriend has prevented me -- once on 9/11, where my first instinct, as a reporter, was to get on my bike, head down there, and find out what was going on at first hand; and once during the notorious RNC Critical Mass bike ride, where Michelle forced us to turn around at the sight of a phalanx of policemen who I was convinced would not arrest us. Another time, she told me not to jump into a lake upstate, but I did anyway, and ended up tearing my foot open. Now it just so happens that I know what a rapidly drawing out ocean means, and if I saw one, I'd move as fast as I could as high as I could. But that's only because my head, rather than my gut, would be telling me to do so. I have a feeling my gut reaction would be to go and check out what was going on.

I suspect that the reason animals were not in the main killed is: 1) They do not tend to aggregate on beaches to sunbathe. Nothing wrong with lying on beaches, unless of course a tsunami hits.
2) If you need to scavenge or hunt for food, the coast is not the best place, as your movement options are effectively halved. And if you were to start your hunt for food on the coast, random walks would take you inland. Another reason why there are fewer animals on the beach.
3) The burrowing animals are dead, but also buried.
4) Climbing animals can climb trees far better than we can. This tsunami didn't drown trees completely, in many cases.
5) Birds. Well.
6) The ocean was weird on many of the videos popping up. Animals probably did run for their life.
7) Flat coastal areas are probably colonized by humans, leaving hilly coastal areas to the animals, where the scramble to high ground is feasible.

Important to note also that an 8.0 Richter scale earthquake has one tenth the intensity of a 9.0 earthquake.

There's been a lot of talk about how there wasn't a system set up to get the word out in time to the Indian Ocean rim countries, and how we now have to spend money that might be put to better use elsewhere to make sure the equivalent of giant "Warning: Tsunami Area" signs be erected from Mombasa to Myanmar.

Rather than addressing the lack of a tsunami-alert system for the Indian Ocean basin, would it make more sense to use this momentum to make sure that those countries that want the help have effective FEMA-like organizations as a central contact point that can be called next time there is such an emergency?

(side note: where did Whizbang come from? I'd never heard of it, and now I've seen it ref'd twice today, both times about tsunamis)

I believe such a network would include an information distribution system, and 24/7 monitoring of the wire.

I'm hoping the tsunami will wake up Americans to the danger of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

Wizbang's been around for awhile.

It doesn't have to cost much more than man hours and internet connections. USGS has an RSS feed with new quakes and tsunami warnings. I subscribe to it. Let police stations along the coasts do the same. Or let a civil servant monitor it 24/7 and call the police stations. The only thing left to do is to install sirens in popular flat areas, if they don't already exist. Let everyone know what it means when they go off.

You could write a script for the RSS reader to make a quick, back-of-the-envelope evaluation whether there's a tsunami risk. If yes, relevant officials would be paged right away.

Here's a question I don't know where else to file:

We've all seen the NOAA-data simulation of the tsunami spreading across the Indian Ocean (it's on the NYT and WP sites, and I'm sure elsewhere). The simulation -which I find engrossing- shows the tsunami spreading across the region like ripples from a skipped stone (you'll pardon the clichÈ).

But how accurate is the simulation? I ask, because it has the ripples bouncing off land masses like waves off the edge of a pool. Does that really happen? Did echo-tsunamis reflect off Sri Lanka into Burma?

Mike I believe when a wave hits, it does not reflect off of land, instead transfering the bulk of it's force onto any object it encounters. Think of an oar in the water, the water doesn't reflect as much as curl around if that makes sense. All of that being said, I'm not an oceanographer, and don't play one on TV either, so don't trust me.

I imagine the ripple effect has more to do with the curling action around any land mass it encountered. You figure the amplification as it crosses the water, along with just smashing into a non-moving object like Sri-Lanka (and who the hell knew Sri Lanka has a Navy anyways?) slows the wave, and deminishes it's force. Not to say that the Burmese didn't get their share of the pain, but it was probably less than if Sri Lanka hadn't been there.

There is some reflection - I don't know how efficient it is, though. In heavier surf you'll see a diminished breaker roll back out and then cross an incoming breaker, resulting in a momentary swell as they complement each other.

I doubt an hour would have been enough to save many lives. But, according to the folks in Honolulu manning a Pacific Rim earthquake warning system (on CNN), had they had the necessary lines into the right people in the Indian Ocean, or if countries there had their own surveillance, they would have given places like India and Sri Lanka up to 14 hours notice. And that would have saved tens of thousands of lives.

Sterling: you're the one that wants to make sure we hold Sontag to the standard of 'intellectual' or 'academic'. If you can't see the gap between consequence and blame, then there's not much I can do for you. Her sentence could be applied to and military conflict in the past hundred years, so I fail to see why it is inflammatory.

If you (we, USA) are all bluster, and you kick sand is someone's face, it is logical to carp about them kicking back? I thought all this Texas macho bullshit was about making sure you had the biggest stick, not whining when someone lands a good blow. What, are we going to run to Mommy every time someone gets a lick in? Jesus, don't be such a pussy. No wonder we haven't found bin Laden: everyone is standing around whining about how it's his fault he landed such a good punch. No fucking shit.

Sontag had a different position on kicking sand in someone's face. You, I recall, want to premptorily nuke North Korea (or is that Ann Coutler -- I get confused). The onus is on you guys to show that you can punch harder and more. Sontag and I are in the camp of thinking throwing that punch isn't the best first step. So punch away. But if you have a glass jaw, you know, keep it to yourself.