Disarming nature's force
Scientist Tad Murty's expertise in tsunamis evolved from an early fascination with natural hazards
He helped create a Pacific monitoring system, and his knowledge is in demand, Graham Fraser writes
GRAHAM FRASER
NATIONAL AFFAIRS WRITER
OTTAWA—Dr. Tad Murty is suddenly the centre of attention.
"I am sure you have heard the expression that everybody has 15 minutes of fame," he said with a smile. "This is my 15 minutes."
It is not surprising that he has been suddenly in demand, receiving phone calls from scientific journals, newspapers and television networks all over the world.
For Murty has been studying tsunamis for 40 years — and helped develop the warning system now in place for countries that border the Pacific Ocean.
If such a system had been in place for the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, Murty maintains, thousands of lives could have been saved. But without such a system, nothing could be done to warn people of the impending disaster.
As a former public servant, Murty understands why; the last tsunami to hit India was in 1945, when the country was still a British colony. Other things seemed more pressing — until Dec. 26.
Now semi-retired — or, rather, embarked on a new teaching career at 67 — and living in Ottawa, Murty's interest in natural disasters was first sparked when he was a teenager in India.
Born Tadepalli Murty in Rambhatlapalyam, a small village in southern India's coastal state of Andhra, he was a teenager in high school when India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was visiting the region following a cyclone.
"Probably a couple of million people came to see him," he recalled in an interview.
"They set up rows and rows of loudspeakers, so I could hear him clearly although I was a good mile away from the stage.
"He used his audience to talk about natural hazards."
In his speech, Nehru — the man who virtually created modern India — complained, only half joking, that India's scientists were spending their time writing equations that only they could understand.
"`I wish once in a while they would work on real, practical issues and explain to the layman what the hell is going on,'" Murty remembers him saying. "`No wonder 99.9 per cent of the human race hates maths — including myself.'"
Nehru promised that India would commit financial resources to institutions that did practical, down-to-earth work on natural phenomena like floods, droughts, earthquakes and tidal waves.
"He didn't use the word tsunami — he probably didn't know there were tsunamis — but he said tidal waves," Murty said. "That was the first time in my life I heard the words `natural hazards.'
"In a sense, that speech by the prime minister inspired me."
A few years later, when he was working on his Master's degree in oceanography, he was fascinated by reports of the Alaskan tsunami in March 1964.
Two things puzzled him.
Outside of Alaska, there were two communities that suffered serious damage: Port Alberni, B.C., and Crescent City, Calif. On the face of it, this didn't make sense: they were protected by inlets.
But subsequent research revealed the answer.
Port Alberni was the victim of what scientists later called "quarter-wave resonance amplification"; instead of providing protection, the inlet formed a kind of echo chamber.
And the tsunami headed west to Japan, and was reflected back across the Pacific. Along the way, it became focused like a lens on Crescent City.
When Murty completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago, he had a number of job offers in the United States.
But in August, 1967, he visited Montreal for Expo '67, and before returning to Chicago, spent several days in Ottawa and Toronto.
Delighted by what he saw, he decided he would make his career in Canada. The federal government was hiring scientists then, and within a few days he had several offers — and accepted one from the Oceanographic Survey.
But he continued to be interested in tsunamis — and was first named to the scientific group established by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau to study the possibility of a tsunami following the announcement in 1971 that the U.S. planned to do nuclear testing in Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands. (His group concluded that the risk of tsunami was minimal.)
But this led to his being named as the research scientist to represent Canada in the creation of the International Tsunami Monitoring System.
As a result of that work, a monitoring system was put in place for the Pacific Ocean that warns of the creation of tsunamis, with warning facilities in 185 B.C. communities, and an elaborate computer modelling system that warns of the conditions that create them.
It is a career and an expertise that has taken him around the world: to Victoria with the federal government, to Adelaide, Australia, where he spent three years as head of the National Tidal Laboratories there, and back to Ottawa where, until last August, he worked with an engineering consulting firm.
But he had one unrealized ambition — to teach university. So he left the firm to teach — at the Natural Resources Institute in Winnipeg last fall and, starting next term, at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa.
However, what Murty calls his 15 minutes of fame has opened new opportunities.
Foreign affairs department officials have already been in touch to see if he would consider travelling to India as one of Canada's experts on the creation of a tsunami monitoring system.
"They know I'm retired and doing fun things," he said with a smile.
Additional articles by Graham Fraser
Monday, January 03, 2005
Morning Papers - download the PDF
Rooster "Cock-A-Doodle-Do"
In History Today
1938: The March of Dimes is founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1946: William Joyce, broadcaster of Nazi propaganda to Great Britain during World War II, is hanged for treason in London, England.
1959: Alaska is admitted to the Union as the 49th state.
Birthdays
106 bc, Cicero (Marcus Tullius), Roman writer, statesman, and orator. Although he had a distinguished political career, he is best known as Rome's greatest orator and as a man of letters. Born in Arpinum (now Arpino, Italy), he is also known in English as Tully. As a youth he studied law, oratory, literature, and philosophy in Rome. After brief military service and three years' experience as a lawyer defending private citizens, he traveled to Greece and Asia, where he continued his studies. He returned to Rome in 77 bc and began his political career, aligning himself with statesman and general Pompey the Great. In 74 bc he entered the Senate.
Although Cicero's family did not belong to the Roman aristocracy, he was supported in the competition for the consulship in 64 bc by most rich and powerful Romans because of their distrust of his aristocratic but less respectable rival, Lucius Sergius Catilina, known as Catiline.
In 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott, American abolitionist and feminist. Born on January 3, 1793, on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, Lucretia Coffin was educated at Nine Partners, a Quaker boarding school near Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1811 she married James Mott, who had been a teacher at the school. After 1817 she became prominent in the Society of Friends, and in 1827, when the society split into two factions, she and her husband joined the Hicksites, the liberal faction led by Elias Hicks. In 1833 the Motts helped organize the American Antislavery Society and in 1840 they were delegates to an international antislavery convention in London. Because of her sex, Mott was excluded from the proceedings and she subsequently devoted most of her time and energy to securing equal rights for women. In 1848 she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.
IT ISN'T AT ALL UNUSUAL FOR A FEMINIST to have been entrenched in religion. The 'church' or 'church organization' was the hub of any community and a meeting place. Women were all to 'used to' the 'pew' and not the ministry. They felt/feel the discrimination heavily when they are 'limited' in their passions. In the case of religion, 'spirituality' is the center of most personality. When women felt the oppression they acted on it realizing it carried over into society and empowerment laid with the government and not their 'roles' .
In 1892, J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel) Tolkien, South African-born British university professor, medieval scholar, philologist, and writer of fantasies. Tolkien is best known for his fantasy novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955).
Human Activity
The New York Times
Relief Effort Gains as Aid Is Reaching More Survivors
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: January 3, 2005
he international lifeline to save five million homeless victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami continued to gather strength on land, sea and air today, as cargo-laden ships and planes converged on stricken coasts in Indonesia and other countries, and helicopters ferried food, water and medicines to desperate, isolated survivors.
Secretary General Kofi Annan during a meeting in his office last week with Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator.
Secret Meeting, Clear Mission: 'Rescue' U.N.
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 2 - The meeting of veteran foreign policy experts in a Manhattan apartment one recent Sunday was held in strict secrecy. The guest of honor arrived without his usual retinue of aides.
The mission, in the words of one participant, was clear: "to save Kofi and rescue the U.N."
At the gathering, Secretary General Kofi Annan listened quietly to three and a half hours of bluntly worded counsel from a group united in its personal regard for him and support for the United Nations. The group's concern was that lapses in his leadership during the past two years had eclipsed the accomplishments of his first four-year term in office and were threatening to undermine the two years remaining in his final term.
Michael Moore Today
Mike's Inauguration Guide
United For Peace and Justice
On Thursday, January 20, 2005, George W. Bush will be inaugurated as president of the United States. For the millions of us who stand for the values of peace and justice, it is a moment to renew our commitment to resist the Bush Administration and its deadly policies of war and greed – and to show Bush, and the world, that our movement is energized, mobilized, and determined to keep fighting back.
If you need information regarding the Inauguration, tune into Mike's Site.
JANUARY 3: DEFEND DEMOCRACY IN COLUMBUS, OHIO
UFPJ joins Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in organizing Jan. 3 Pro-Democracy/Count Every Vote Rally
December 23rd, 2004
2:00 pm Rally
Capitol Theatre
Vern Riffe Center for Government and the Arts
77 S. High Street
At High & State Streets, across from the Ohio State House in downtown Columbus.
Proceed up two escalators from the High Street entrance.
Thursday, Jan 06 @ 10:00 AM] Block Congressional Certification of the Electoral College!
Block Congressional Certification of the Electoral College!
Thursday, Jan 06 @ 10:00 AM
3.00 hours
Location: Upper Senate Park (near Union Station), Washington, DC
On January 6, 2005, Congress will meet in joint session to certify the 2004 presidential election. On that day, if one member of the House and one member of the Senate object to the certification of the vote, then all members of Congress will finally discuss these issues. On January 6, 2001, not a single Senator would join with the Representatives who demanded an inquiry into the Florida recount. This year, let’s make our Senators take a stand!
Rehnquist lashes out against bashers of `judicial activists'
By David G. Savage / Chicago Tribune
Ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in a report released Saturday that judges must be protected from political threats, including from conservative Republicans who maintain that "judicial activists" should be impeached and removed from office.
The Los Angeles Times
Rain, Snow Snarl Southland Commute
By Michael Muskal, Times Staff Writer
Southern Californians returning to work today after the holiday hiatus were greeted by fierce winter storms that threatened floods, dumped piles of snow and clogged traffic arteries.
Winter storm warnings were posted throughout the region and the danger of flooding grew as rain fell in sheets in some locations. Potholes, sinkholes and felled trees dotted the landscape.
Bush Enlists Father and Clinton For Relief
By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Stepping up efforts to expand the U.S. role in Southeast Asia's recovery, President Bush today enlisted two former presidents — his father and Bill Clinton — to solicit and coordinate charitable contributions flowing from the American people to survivors of the tsunami, and declared, "America will be there to help."
Out of the blue
It's whale watching made easy in the waters of the north Pacific, where the ocean's superstars put on quite a show. And now, visitors can have a ringside seat.
By Rosemary McClure, Times Staff Writer
For a good time, follow the whales. The big boys of Planet Ocean vacation in some of the world's finest locations: the warm lagoons and bays of Hawaii and Mexico in winter, the clear waters of Canada and Alaska in summer. In some ways, they're like the seriously wealthy, tracking the sun to the world's playgrounds.
The Guardian - A British Paper - Frequently these days I find I have to access information outside the USA to gain correct information and insight. As this newsprint politely and correctly points out, the Faith Based Initiative is a failure. It allows those that 'care to' to receive government monies to carry out therapies they aren't qualified to do only to put the 'fear of God' into them to prevent them from addictions. Too bad, people have to go through life being fearful of a wrath that rarely exists to put A PERSON on the right track. The Faith Based initative is so much misguided that the teenage sex education goals include abstinance rather than preventive measures resulting in Texas being the second highest Teen Pregnancy state in the country.
Bush Pushing for More Faith-Based Funds
Monday January 3, 2005 9:31 PM
AP Photo WX101
By LAURA MECKLER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush has succeeded in opening the checkbooks of five federal departments to religious organizations. Now he's setting his sights on money doled out by the states.
The Times, London
Bush's law chief facing test on human rights
From Roland Watson in Washington
PRESIDENT BUSH’S second term mandate faces its first important test this week when Democrats open a new session of Congress by challenging his most controversial Cabinet appointment.
In History Today
1938: The March of Dimes is founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1946: William Joyce, broadcaster of Nazi propaganda to Great Britain during World War II, is hanged for treason in London, England.
1959: Alaska is admitted to the Union as the 49th state.
Birthdays
106 bc, Cicero (Marcus Tullius), Roman writer, statesman, and orator. Although he had a distinguished political career, he is best known as Rome's greatest orator and as a man of letters. Born in Arpinum (now Arpino, Italy), he is also known in English as Tully. As a youth he studied law, oratory, literature, and philosophy in Rome. After brief military service and three years' experience as a lawyer defending private citizens, he traveled to Greece and Asia, where he continued his studies. He returned to Rome in 77 bc and began his political career, aligning himself with statesman and general Pompey the Great. In 74 bc he entered the Senate.
Although Cicero's family did not belong to the Roman aristocracy, he was supported in the competition for the consulship in 64 bc by most rich and powerful Romans because of their distrust of his aristocratic but less respectable rival, Lucius Sergius Catilina, known as Catiline.
In 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott, American abolitionist and feminist. Born on January 3, 1793, on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, Lucretia Coffin was educated at Nine Partners, a Quaker boarding school near Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1811 she married James Mott, who had been a teacher at the school. After 1817 she became prominent in the Society of Friends, and in 1827, when the society split into two factions, she and her husband joined the Hicksites, the liberal faction led by Elias Hicks. In 1833 the Motts helped organize the American Antislavery Society and in 1840 they were delegates to an international antislavery convention in London. Because of her sex, Mott was excluded from the proceedings and she subsequently devoted most of her time and energy to securing equal rights for women. In 1848 she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.
IT ISN'T AT ALL UNUSUAL FOR A FEMINIST to have been entrenched in religion. The 'church' or 'church organization' was the hub of any community and a meeting place. Women were all to 'used to' the 'pew' and not the ministry. They felt/feel the discrimination heavily when they are 'limited' in their passions. In the case of religion, 'spirituality' is the center of most personality. When women felt the oppression they acted on it realizing it carried over into society and empowerment laid with the government and not their 'roles' .
In 1892, J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel) Tolkien, South African-born British university professor, medieval scholar, philologist, and writer of fantasies. Tolkien is best known for his fantasy novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955).
Human Activity
The New York Times
Relief Effort Gains as Aid Is Reaching More Survivors
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: January 3, 2005
he international lifeline to save five million homeless victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami continued to gather strength on land, sea and air today, as cargo-laden ships and planes converged on stricken coasts in Indonesia and other countries, and helicopters ferried food, water and medicines to desperate, isolated survivors.
Secretary General Kofi Annan during a meeting in his office last week with Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator.
Secret Meeting, Clear Mission: 'Rescue' U.N.
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 2 - The meeting of veteran foreign policy experts in a Manhattan apartment one recent Sunday was held in strict secrecy. The guest of honor arrived without his usual retinue of aides.
The mission, in the words of one participant, was clear: "to save Kofi and rescue the U.N."
At the gathering, Secretary General Kofi Annan listened quietly to three and a half hours of bluntly worded counsel from a group united in its personal regard for him and support for the United Nations. The group's concern was that lapses in his leadership during the past two years had eclipsed the accomplishments of his first four-year term in office and were threatening to undermine the two years remaining in his final term.
Michael Moore Today
Mike's Inauguration Guide
United For Peace and Justice
On Thursday, January 20, 2005, George W. Bush will be inaugurated as president of the United States. For the millions of us who stand for the values of peace and justice, it is a moment to renew our commitment to resist the Bush Administration and its deadly policies of war and greed – and to show Bush, and the world, that our movement is energized, mobilized, and determined to keep fighting back.
If you need information regarding the Inauguration, tune into Mike's Site.
JANUARY 3: DEFEND DEMOCRACY IN COLUMBUS, OHIO
UFPJ joins Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in organizing Jan. 3 Pro-Democracy/Count Every Vote Rally
December 23rd, 2004
2:00 pm Rally
Capitol Theatre
Vern Riffe Center for Government and the Arts
77 S. High Street
At High & State Streets, across from the Ohio State House in downtown Columbus.
Proceed up two escalators from the High Street entrance.
Thursday, Jan 06 @ 10:00 AM] Block Congressional Certification of the Electoral College!
Block Congressional Certification of the Electoral College!
Thursday, Jan 06 @ 10:00 AM
3.00 hours
Location: Upper Senate Park (near Union Station), Washington, DC
On January 6, 2005, Congress will meet in joint session to certify the 2004 presidential election. On that day, if one member of the House and one member of the Senate object to the certification of the vote, then all members of Congress will finally discuss these issues. On January 6, 2001, not a single Senator would join with the Representatives who demanded an inquiry into the Florida recount. This year, let’s make our Senators take a stand!
Rehnquist lashes out against bashers of `judicial activists'
By David G. Savage / Chicago Tribune
Ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in a report released Saturday that judges must be protected from political threats, including from conservative Republicans who maintain that "judicial activists" should be impeached and removed from office.
The Los Angeles Times
Rain, Snow Snarl Southland Commute
By Michael Muskal, Times Staff Writer
Southern Californians returning to work today after the holiday hiatus were greeted by fierce winter storms that threatened floods, dumped piles of snow and clogged traffic arteries.
Winter storm warnings were posted throughout the region and the danger of flooding grew as rain fell in sheets in some locations. Potholes, sinkholes and felled trees dotted the landscape.
Bush Enlists Father and Clinton For Relief
By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Stepping up efforts to expand the U.S. role in Southeast Asia's recovery, President Bush today enlisted two former presidents — his father and Bill Clinton — to solicit and coordinate charitable contributions flowing from the American people to survivors of the tsunami, and declared, "America will be there to help."
Out of the blue
It's whale watching made easy in the waters of the north Pacific, where the ocean's superstars put on quite a show. And now, visitors can have a ringside seat.
By Rosemary McClure, Times Staff Writer
For a good time, follow the whales. The big boys of Planet Ocean vacation in some of the world's finest locations: the warm lagoons and bays of Hawaii and Mexico in winter, the clear waters of Canada and Alaska in summer. In some ways, they're like the seriously wealthy, tracking the sun to the world's playgrounds.
The Guardian - A British Paper - Frequently these days I find I have to access information outside the USA to gain correct information and insight. As this newsprint politely and correctly points out, the Faith Based Initiative is a failure. It allows those that 'care to' to receive government monies to carry out therapies they aren't qualified to do only to put the 'fear of God' into them to prevent them from addictions. Too bad, people have to go through life being fearful of a wrath that rarely exists to put A PERSON on the right track. The Faith Based initative is so much misguided that the teenage sex education goals include abstinance rather than preventive measures resulting in Texas being the second highest Teen Pregnancy state in the country.
Bush Pushing for More Faith-Based Funds
Monday January 3, 2005 9:31 PM
AP Photo WX101
By LAURA MECKLER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush has succeeded in opening the checkbooks of five federal departments to religious organizations. Now he's setting his sights on money doled out by the states.
The Times, London
Bush's law chief facing test on human rights
From Roland Watson in Washington
PRESIDENT BUSH’S second term mandate faces its first important test this week when Democrats open a new session of Congress by challenging his most controversial Cabinet appointment.
Other's Welcome Opinion
I don't necessarily agree that boycotting every aspect of a company is necessary so much as that which is troublesome. I'll write more about strategies to beat Global Warming including localizing economies that serve the people within them. Local economies reduce the need for autos and reduce the dangerous ozone levels we find in most cities. By mapping a common route one travels on a regular basis people can 'strategize' against excess and more their own economy to a more economical and budget friendly 'task oriented' route to local merchants that learn the needs and likes of those they sell their goods. Being energy efficient in our activities we also have time for others, family and activities we never seem to have time.
Boycotting the Hegemony
Part One: Halliburton
by Gerard Donnelly Smith
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability."
—Arundhati Roy, January 28, 2003, Porto Alegre, Brazil
end of entry for now. in the future there will be evidence of Global Warming included on the day as well.
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