John Headland, P.E., Principal, Moffatt & Nichol – Sri Lanka COPRI Team Leader

Our travels took us from Colombo to Hamanatata today (250 km). We boarded a bus led by our competent guide, Suresh, and his wife. The trip from Colombo to Galle retraced the steps that Peter Yin and I had taken two days earlier. As with many endeavors in life, we learned from the repetition. We saw and understood more the second time (e.g, the nature of damage to buildings and coastal structures, the two breaches of the shoreline at Kalutara and Bentota, and additional watermarks). We also learned more about the Sri Lankan people and the importance of "mind over matter" in the culture. This outlook seems to account for the brave face that so many Sri Lankans have worn throughout this monumental disaster.

The Colombo Daily News ran an article on Jan 31, 2005, about the importance of educating young readers about tsunamis. The article focused on a 1972 Isaac Asimov short story. Asimov's book, More Science Words, included a short essay on tsunamis. He explains that a "seaquake" will produce a small wave height at sea. "Such a wave spreads outward in all directions from the point at which the quake took place...As it approaches land and as the ocean gets shallower, the stretch of water in the wave is compressed front and rear and piles up higher, sometimes to one hundred feet high." Asimov goes on to explain that the wave can "break over a city, drowning thousands and before the wave comes in, the preceding trough arrives." He notes further that the water recedes a great distance, like an enormous low tide, and then the wave comes in like a colossal high tide. A more concise or eloquent explanation of ocean wave transformation for the layperson does not exist.

Had this story been read by small children in Sri Lanka in 1972, the death toll might not have been as high. As I mentioned two days ago, 1,500 people were killed on the train at Hikkaduwa. One factor in so many deaths was that adults and small children ran to the train for safety, rather than ascending to upper floors and roofs of homes. Something similar occurred at the Galle bus station where so many were killed; rather than simply climbing to the upper stories of the adjacent terminal, residents instead entered buses for safety. People also went to a lower-level parking garage area. Clearly, tsunami education will save lives.

As we end the day, we can summarize with three fundamentals. First, the tsunami wave heights vary from location to location. Second, damage and deaths are directly proportional to elevation. Finally, education and the combination of warning systems and evacuation routes to higher ground will make a profound difference in the future.