This disaster was largely man-made, through a combination of negligence, lethargy and failure to learn from history. Many things in life, such as disease and earthquakes, are inevitable and cannot be controlled by technology. But the catastrophic loss of life that occurred on December 26 could and should have been much reduced.
'No one should die from a tsunami,' an American geologist is quoted as having said. His thinking is that with the benefit of an advance warning system such as is already in place for the Pacific Ocean, everyone can be warned to flee.
But conditions in developing nations and human nature dictate that many will die. Some will not hear, or will ignore, warnings or will try to save their property; buildings will collapse; others will not reach high ground in time.
What is increasingly clear, however, is that the enormous death toll could have been avoided if a few important things had been done. Scientists had, for years, called for the establishment of a buoy-based warning system in the Indian Ocean, since active earthquake zones are present in the region. In spite of costs estimated in the tens of millions of US dollars, it is hard to understand why it was not put in place.
Even without the hi-tech system, a few basic lessons learned from history would have saved thousands. In 1883, the great eruption of Krakatoa, in Indonesia, created huge tsunamis that wiped out coastal villages on the Sunda Strait (including the western coast of Sumatra).
More recently, tsunamis from an earthquake off Flores in 1992 destroyed 18,000 houses and killed several hundred people.