[LINK] Australian Tsunami Warning Issued

[Tom Worthington]

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre 
<http://www.bom.gov.au/tsunami/> issued a Land Warning for Lord Howe 
Island at 10:45 PM EST on 15 July 2009 and a Marine Warning for much 
of south east Australia. This followed an earthquake off the south of 
New Zealand at 0923Z 15 JUL 2009 
<http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=1&id=pacific.2009.07.15.094021>. 
The media were requested to use the Standard Emergency Warning Signal 
(SEWS) for Lord Howe Island, but not mainland Australia.

At 12:14 AM EST on Thursday 16 July 2009 the warning for Lord Howe 
Island was downgraded to a marine warning and use of the SEWS 
cancelled. One anomaly with this was that the message for Lord Howe 
Island (IDY68035) used different text to those for the mainland (such 
as IDY68028). The mainland messages said "Marine Warning", whereas 
the Lord Howe Island message did not contain that phrase. This may 
seem a minor point, but a lack of use of standard wording can cause 
dangerous misunderstandings.

Unlike the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the Australian Centre does 
not appear to provide a public archive of issued messages, so I have 
included two in my blog for research purposes: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/07/australian-tsunami-warning.html>.

ps: For a discussion of warning systems see my Seminar, College of 
Engineering and Computer Science, ANU, Canberra, 16 April 2009: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/bushfire_warning_system/>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University