Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON – The East Coast of the United States, with no advance warning system or equipment to detect a giant wave in the Atlantic Ocean, remains extremely vulnerable to tsunamis like the one that devastated Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, a group of scientists warned Tuesday.

The scientists said the East Coast has no “dark buoys” – devices costing $266,000 apiece capable of detecting underwater earthquakes and changes in water level – which prevents scientists from giving any advance warnings to coastal residents and vacationers.

Timothy Walsh, a geologist in Washington state, said, “These kinds of systems cannot be established easily or quickly. We are still having problems getting information to people in harm’s way.”

Walsh and other scientists voiced their warnings at a conference on tsunamis sponsored by the Smithsonian. In the wake of more than 160,000 deaths and the vast property destruction caused by the Asian tsunami, the scientists used the opportunity to warn of the lack of preparedness for such a disaster on the East Coast.

They called the possibility of a tsunami striking the Atlantic a certainty.

“It’s not a matter of if but when,” said Laura Kong, director of the United Nations-run International Tsunami Information Centre in Hawaii.

While there is no formal tsunami warning system for the Atlantic, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently proposed a regional tsunami center in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Hawaii and the coastal states along the Pacific Ocean are monitored by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center based in Hawaii and operated by NOAA. The center continuously monitors the Pacific basin for seismic activity and this information is shared with neighboring countries. There is a similar center in Alaska.

But no such system exists for the Atlantic basin or the East Coast where available funding has instead been used to create hurricane warning systems.

The last major recorded tsunami affecting the East Coast was in 1755, although there have been smaller waves that have killed 2,500 people in the Caribbean and along the Canadian coast over the last 150 years. The experts said that time is not on their side in creating a warning system.

George Maul, an oceanography professor at Florida Institute of Technology, said, “A quarter of tsunamis are associated with the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean is at the highest risk, but tsunamis could also affect some parts of the Atlantic coast,” especially Florida.