With the help of my colleague, Alex Molina, I recently wrote about the realistic danger that tsunamis posed to the west coast of the United States.

I had vastly underestimated the damage a tsunami can do, and the last two days, after reading about the 8.3 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that followed, I also got to watch the Pacific Ocean's tsunami warning system in action.

In the case of Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga, the earthquake's epicenter and aftershocks were in some cases less than 100 miles from the coastlines. This meant that the early warning system had little time to warn anyone. At this time, over 111 people are reported missing or dead from the three Pacific territories, and that count is expected to be considerably higher once emergency personnel make it to hard to access, outlying areas. In some cases, the waves came as far as a mile inland.

From reports from the wire services and people I've talked to in American Samoa, the only immediate warning for the tsunami most people received were the cell phone calls made by forward-thinking family. Common sense dictated that if an earthquake was both near enough and powerful enough to damage buildings, a tsunami was on its way. While many villages were literally swept completely into the Pacific Ocean, most people managed to get to high ground and escaped with their lives.

In the future, these three areas, particularly American Samoa, since it is under jurisdiction of FEMA and the US Government, will have to improve their Tsunami warning system up to the high standard set by the state of Oregon, which includes blue sirens all along the coast, and regularly scheduled tsunami drills in all the public schools.

Over the last several years, I have written hundreds of articles about weather events, and quite a few people have read them, and many of these pieces have been picked up by e-zines, other websites, trade publications, and even a few have appeared on think tank websites.

Putting this into perspective

As we speak, a much deadlier weather event has left over 300 dead and thousands homeless, as Typhoon Ketsana has slammed into the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia. As much as 80% of Manila is underwater. A second quake hit Indonesia today, a 7.6 magnitude quake, scaring everyone up into the hills. Considering it was an 8.0 quake in the same area that prompted the 2004 Tsunami of infamy, I can't say they overreacted. If I felt a strong earthquake on any coastline, I would hightail it at least a mile into the hills as well.

The tsunami that resulted from it was less that a foot, smaller than what hit Hawaii or Crescent City, California from the Samoa earthquake. Officials were able to call off the warnings and people soon returned to their normal lives.

In the world of extreme weather events, we can only still guess at exactly what a hurricane will do or where it will go. This is true of many weather events, be they floods, tornadoes, even a wildfire. Earthquakes are the worst of all, and give no warning, but unless you are close to the epicenter, tsunamis are at least predictable in the Pacific, thanks to the work of the US and Japanese governments.

While generally natural occurrences, flash floods are increasingly the result of human activities or poorly designed infrastructure. Very few countries have flash flood management action plan. Among those that do, China stands out with severe penalties for negligence. Flash floods are frequent features in China with two-thirds of the Chinese territory being mountainous, the recurrent natural disasters compounded by monsoon climate, fragile mountain terrain and increasing human activity. The threat confronts a total of 74 million population exposed to flash flood hazards in the mountain region. In a period of four decades (1950-1990) a total of 225,000 died in floods in China. (iii) The action plan calls for approval of any new construction in urban planning contingent upon completion of a flash flood assessment.

Prior to approving construction projects, city/municipal authorities could examine conditions affecting the construction area. Best practices in the management of flash floods in urban areas warrant enhancing the disaster management chain and assuring these extend into urban planning. Among some authorities, the approach include helping municipalities prepare for climate change. (iv)

Else where, like in West Africa, there's a growing awareness that "urban surge feeds flooding", if left unplanned and unorganized, that is. Dakar's suburb of Guediawave was a dry area 30 years ago. Nowadays, it's a different story. The residents of this densely populated suburb endure floods every rainy season. (v) Explosive population growth, poor urban management, urban congestion, and indiscriminate building in green belt zones all add on to shortening the fuse for disaster. Overpopulation in northern Nigeria has people building homes on waterways, and natural drainage system becoming blocked by rubbish. Despite bans on construction in the Dakar "cap vert" wetlands, this flood prone area received waves of rural-urban migration in the wake of the 70s and 80s Sahel-wide drought. Now the region is full of buildings and roads which block natural waterways and basins

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