Tsunami !

Last night many people were startled to hear a TV newsflash reporting an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale that had just occurred off the coast of the New Zealand south island.

Even more startling - the Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii had issued a Tsunami alert for the entire east coast of Australia - and Lord Howe island.

Fortunately, after an hour this alert was cancelled. We were simply lucky ! It was a similar sized undersea quake off Sumatra at Christmas several years ago that devastated most of Asia and caused a horror death toll.

Tsunami's are a product of circumstances. A lot depends on the severity of the quake - the depth that it occurs and the topography of the ocean floor. In this instance circumstances were in our favour - and the resulting Tsunami was a mere twenty centimetres high.

We can not always depend on sheer good luck, and now would be a good time to ask a very important question.

Had that quake last night produced a ten metre Tsunami which would progressively hit the east coast of Australia some hours later - starting with Tasmania and then expanding through Victoria and into New South Wales - what evacuation plans are ready and waiting to reduce the inevitable death toll ?

Sadly - the answer would be - none !

From time to time we have heard of plans for warning systems. Sydney supposedly has a system of loud speakers through the CBD, but in a recent emergency there was a power failure - and with that this system simply did not work.

There was talk of making evacuation plans for Wollongong - and with our fire prone escarpment there is the certainty of disaster waiting to happen - but that idea found it's way into the " too hard basket ".

Last night could be seen as a timely wake-up call.

Fires, earthquakes - and Tsunamis do happen. A good time to dust off those abandoned plans and give the subject fresh thinking !