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Ed Yeates ReportingA Utah scientist says a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean will have to go in quickly if it's to beat the next big earthquake. Brigham Young University geologist Ron Harris is part of a team getting ready to develop that network.
The 2004 tsunami hit the Indian Ocean followed a major earthquake and killed more than 200-thousand people. If the next one should hit Java, Ron Harris says the disaster will be historically devastating.
Ron Harris, BYU Geophysics: "If something like the Sumatra earthquake happens soon before we can get ready, we'll maybe have the first natural disaster that costs a million lives."
Over the past 55 million years, the Australian and Indian plates have been pushing and squeezing continental masses in this area at a rapid rate. For example, the Great Basin here is stretching away from our own Wasatch fault at about two millimeters per year. But the plates over there are moving at eight centimeters per year.
Ron Harris: "So this Australian plate is moving 40 times faster."
That's a tremendous strain, building mountains, in some cases, 10-thousand feet in just the past few million years.
Each one of these Tsunami bench lines were left behind after a major magnitude quake of 7 1/2, eight, or greater, happening now not rarely but frequently. So Harris and his colleagues will set up a combined network of seismometers and a computerized system, all automatic, that will evaluate, even simulate where a Tsunami will hit.
To those on the receiving end it will provide a lot of information.
Ron Harris: "Magnitude of inundation and where to go for safety. And that information could be transmitted in a matter of seconds."
Harris' plan also calls for vegetating coastline beaches to break up Tsunami waves.
Harris has applied for a 600-thousand dollar grant to move ahead with the first phase of the system, which could begin as early as this summer.
