The Bush administration will spend $37.5 million over the next three years to expand the nation's tsunami detection and warning system, U.S. officials said yesterday, so the nation will be able to monitor underwater activity threatening any of its coasts by mid-2007.
The move, which comes on the heels of last month's Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 157,000 people, would double America's tsunami detection capacity by installing 32 new deep-sea buoys in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. The government would also devote millions to buy nearly 40 sea-level monitoring and tide gauge stations and to upgrade 20 seismometers, which detect earthquakes.
"The world's attention has been focused on the vulnerability of people who live on the edge of oceans, and we have a responsibility to respond to their need," John H. Marburger III, President Bush's top science adviser, said at a news conference. Marburger said U.S. officials are now pursuing a tsunami warning system "that might have taken years to roll out" without the recent devastation in South Asia.
Tsunamis are long waves that can be sparked by any rapid, large-scale underwater disturbance, such as an earthquake, landslide or volcano, and can grow to enormous size when they reach shore.
The United States has six pressure sensors on the ocean floor off the West Coast, which detect changes caused by deep-water tsunamis and send an acoustic signal to a deep-water surface buoy that transmits the signal via satellite to scientists at tsunami warning centers in Hawaii and Alaska. Three of the six pressure sensors are not working and are awaiting repair.
The United States is not as vulnerable to tsunamis as other regions of the world, said P. Patrick Leahy, associate director for geology for the U.S. Geological Survey, but it does face a risk. Half the nation's population lives on the coast, and 180 million Americans visit the East and West coasts each year.
"This is no longer a scientific endeavor; it really is a matter of public safety," Leahy said.
The last major tsunami to hit the U.S. mainland occurred in 1964 during an Alaskan earthquake, costing 110 lives in Alaska, California and Oregon.
About 85 percent of tsunamis occur in the Pacific, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, because of the large number of shifting tectonic plates that push against one another underneath the sea. The pressure builds up until it is released abruptly in an earthquake, which can displace enormous amounts of water.
Under the administration's plan, which will be funded as part of this year's emergency spending bill and next year's regular appropriations process, the United States will install tsunami-sensing buoys for the first time in the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Last month, a pair of American scientists warned that tectonic pressure is rising near Puerto Rico and the island of Hispaniola and could produce tsunamis in the coming years.
NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. said the need for more buoys is critical because their sensors measure passing tsunamis, whereas tide gauges measure changing water levels close to the coast. Before the government began fully operating its six deep-sea buoys in 2003, 75 percent of its tsunami warnings were false alarms, a figure that has since dropped to zero. He added that with the new system, U.S. residents may have from several minutes to a few hours of warning.
Robert A. Weller, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who monitors ocean observing systems, said the accelerated program "seems to make a lot of sense," because if a substandard program generates too many false alarms, "the public's not going to believe you" if the real thing comes along.
