Why do people stand and watch disaster approaching? (Pic)

[SoCalDem]

This photo was snapped by a surfer ..obviously from a balcony.. LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE on the beach, just watching as the ocean bottom all of a sudden was exposed by the water receding.. What were they thinking?? Were they thinking? Instead of turning around and running for their lives, and warning everyone, they stood there and WAITED for what would definitely happe... The water would return...with a vengeance.. SOME of them HAD to know what would happen, but they were mesmerized by nature. Like kids at a scary movie, peeking from their hands-covered-eyes, wanting to see what happens.

I once stood next to a wall of sliding glass doors watching a tornado rip mature cottonwood trees out of the ground like matchsticks. Five grown women stood there hypnotized by what we were seeing, even as debris hit the sliding doors.

I guess they could not believe their eyes:(




(gallery at http://www.surfingthemag.com/gallery/tsunami04/gallery )

[yardwork]

1. The people should have been warned to get off the beach

These videos are horrific. It's been a long time since a big tsunami hit these parts of the world. I don't think people knew what would happen.

There should have been a warning system. A lot more people could have gotten to the tops of buildings and survived.

[LiberalVoice]

6. what videos?

If there are videos can you please provide a link?

[yardwork]

39. I'm sorry, I don't have a link. There have been several threads here

with links to videos. I'll do a search and bump a thread for you.

[Baclava]

40. Warned?

If you're standing on the beach and the fucking water suddenly disappears to the horizon...I would say that's a pretty good clue to GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!!!

[karlrschneider]

2. Maybe they just didn't know that if you're ever at the beach & see the

water RECEDING, RUN LIKE HELL! :eyes:

[TheDebbieDee]

11. Honestly, I wouldn't have had a clue as to what was going on....

if I noticed there was no longer any water on the beach. I would have stood, wondering what was happening until I got swept away by the big wave.

[SoCalDem]

3. Amazing Phuket pics from pbase

http://www.pbase.com/issels/phuket_tsunami

[Malva Zebrina]

4. I cannot comprehend what they were thinking

I live on the midcoast of Maine, near a lighthouse.

Tourists are warned not to climb on the rocks. Nevertheless, they do.

There have been what is called "rogue waves" here, that no one seems to know from whence they come. Almost every year, there is one unfortunate who is swept off the rocks by this wave, and drowned.

[Pirate Smile]

5. Tornado warning - I get the kids and dog in the basement but I can't

keep my husband from going outside to watch. I always want to kick his ass when he does it but I have to stay calm for the kids.

Sometimes I can guilt him into being a good example for the kids, sometimes not.

[lpbk2713]

7. It typifies human nature.

People always assume "nothing bad will happen to me, it always happens to the other guy". Like when you leave your home for a short drive. You might pass a traffic accident and never assume something like that will happen to you.

[Pirate Smile]

8. "Curiosity killed the cat" - the saying could just as well be people and

not felines.

[tridim]

9. Because it's human nature to watch when stuff like this happens

I admit I would have stood and watched in awe as the water receded. I'm guessing only a handful of experts know what precedes a tsunami. I wonder if the observers got the sense that the land was rising or the ocean was draining?

[Jane Austin]

16. Being a landlubber, myself,

I probably would have thought it was the tide going out.

But Worldly Husband lived in Hawaii as a kid, and he says they were all taught that.

It's part of growing up on an island.

[SammyWinstonJack]

24. Yet the animals followed their instincts for survival and got out

before all hell broke loose, while the more "intelligent" humans stood awe struck in amazement.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Amazing picture..and an excellent question...

I read an article that said after the earthquake, authorities could have given the people an hours warning to head to higher land and decided not to because they were not sure there would be a tsunami and did not want to spoil the tourist trade.

"Bangkok's newspaper The Nation reported that Thailand's Meteorological Department, which supervises the country’s Seismological Department, was conducting a seminar at the hour the earthquake struck, Sunday morning, prevailing local time. Told the initial Richter Scale measurement was 8.2, a leading member of that department reportedly concluded there would be no tsunami, because another 2002 earthquake in the same Sumatra region that had measured 7.6 had produced no tsunami. The meeting devolved into the pros and cons of hurting the nation’s huge tourist economy in the event a warning proved unnecessary."

more
....
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240

[Historic NY]

12. My take is most didn't even know what was happening.....it was......

this weird occurrence and they have never seen it before. Bizarre as it sounds how many people have seen a tsunami before.

[Javaman]

13. Deer in the headlights

[AngryOldDem]

14. Shock? Disbelief? Hubris?

[Mist]

15. My father was in the Pacific in WWII

Among other things he was in Hawaii to help w/rescue and clean-up after a tsunami. He told me if I ever saw the water receding rapidly, RUN in the other direction. Also told me to call it a "tsunami," not a tidal wave.

[Jean Louise Finch]

17. They just didn't know

The weather was perfectly clear and lovely. A tsunami hasn't hit in this region in years and years. People just didn't know what it meant, and there was all this land exposed that had never been seen before. There were fish flapping around. I can only speak for myself, but I would have had no idea.

Does anyone know how much time you really have from when the water recedes to when the wave hits? I guess every 10m you can run will help your chances, but I just wonder how much time you actually have.

[osaMABUSh]

18. C'mom, these poor souls were clueless like we all would have

been. They may have lived near the ocean the entire lives but w/o any prior tsunami experience or education they were just doing what we'd all do.

[SoCalDem]

19. I find it hard to believe that the schools did not teach them

about what it means to live near a coast.. We had few hurricanes ever touch us when I lived in Panama, but in school every year, we had special drills and since our school was ON the coast, we were even taught about the tides.. This was elementary school..

Lots of lives would have been spared if they could have only gone a mile inland...

[apple_ridge]

20. They're mostly tourists and they simply didn't know any

better.

[lpbk2713]

28. We have a similar situation with tourists here in Florida.

Although certainly not on the same scale. Tourists think it's fun to feed the gators they find in the wild. They just don't understand it when the same gator eats their little doggie or even now and then a little kid because he is not as naturally afraid as he once was. That gator then has to be hunted down and killed. All due to the tourist's need to be entertained.

[idiosyncratic]

21. I wonder what the "after" picture of that area looks like. n/t

[cally]

22. I think few understood what was happening

I read somewhere that initially the wave did not look that big. It was the volume of water behind it that did the real damage. From the beach, you wouldn't be able to understand. There should be a warning system. Many knew this was occurring and did not warn folks.

As an aside, SF is just getting a Tsunami warning system next month.

[Shakespeare]

23. I think we're related to domesticated turkeys.

Who will stand, looking up, beaks agape, in a rainstorm, until they drown.

[donheld]

25. It can't happen here. It can't happen to me.

we all tend to fall into these patterns.

[pmbryant]

26. Was that picture taken before or after the tsunami hit?

And where was it taken?

It's hard to tell, but to me, it looks like it was taken afterwards, like all the other pictures in that gallery. There appears to debris scattered about, including what looks like some vehicles. And in the lower center of the picture, there is a road that appears half-buried under dirt and pools of water.

I do admit that it's hard to tell exactly what the details in this picture are.

:shrug:

--Peter

[idiosyncratic]

29. Definitely before. The after pictures in another thread show

the earth to be scoured. In some of those shots, nothing is left except the outlines of some buildings' foundations.

I saw what water can do once in the aftermath of a deadly flash flood in Colorado. It is frightening.

[pmbryant]

31. Can you point me to the link to the 'after' picture?

Thanks,
Peter

[SoCalDem]

30. I googled it and I am guessing Madras

Notice the cars are still driving on the road just on the other side of the beachfront.

The picture has no caption, but it looks to me as if the water has been drawn out, and the wave is yet to come..

If it's Madras, there would likely NOT be fancy tourist hotels...probably just curious locals..

[idiosyncratic]

35. Here is the other thread with before and after pics

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2884543

[diamond14]

27. same thing happens with chemical accidents, fires, and 9-11

so many people are very clueless and just walk right into the chemicals or fail to LEAVE (most obviously in NYC after 911, where thousands continued to live there and BREATHE carcinogens, asbestos, and lots of lung-altering PLASTICs, including DIOXINS)....

I have inspected many many chemical accidents, where something happens, and several other employees go right into the danger and DIE...sometimes it's for good intentions (like trying to rescue), but sometimes it's for LOOKING at the amazing green cloud of chlorine gas...often people go out of their way to LOOK at a chemical spill on the highway, inhaling benzene or other toxic chemicals from fires, spills, etc....


on 911, I stayed in my office about one mile from the pentagon....one should NEVER go outside in an emergency unless you KNOW what's going on....nobody KNEW what was involved in the pentagon disaster....chemicals, biotoxins, nobody KNEW....I had the security guards close the intakes for the building, and then continues to work and call people to report on the mess over the potomac bridges and highway one....huge numbers of people in DC were trying to get across the potomac bridges and INTO VIRGINIA, where the pentagon was burning and blowing out huge amounts of dioxins, asbestos, lead, and burning plastics from the offices...nasty stuff to be walking or driving into.....those people should have gone the OTHER WAY....

[AngryAmish]

32. Hindsight is 20/20

I read the Krakatoa book a few months ago and that is where I read about tsunamis. Native people who lived in geologically unstable places all their lives ran out to catch fish left on the ocean floor. Then BLAMMO!

I don't know what I would have done if placed in the same situation. I probably would be in the belly of a shark by now.

Humans are fallable. We don't always do the perfect thing in all stressful situations. To complain otherwise is cruel sniping of the worst sort.

[diamond14]

34. knowledge is power....I had to save a couple of incredibly ignorant

people just today...they were loading up TWO huge pickup trucks in the underground parking garage of my building, while RUNNING BOTH ENGINES, parked with the tailpipes BLOWING CARBON MONOXIDE INTO THE LOBBY....two people got real sick, and I assessed this madness, told these morons to TURN OFF THEIR TRUCKS, and then opened every single door that I could find for some fresh air....


it's not unusual this time of year, to find people SMELLING THE MERCAPTANS from a gas leak, for days, and doing nothing....then have a HUGE explosion....the survivors will stand outside and tell you that they DID SMELL the WARNING CHEMICAL put into all gas lines, so that you CALL 911...but they didn't do anything...they just smelled it for days, sometimes they'll say that the smell was BOTHERING THEM....

[SoCalDem]

38. Not "complaining"...merely commenting on the phenomena

I have done it myself with tornados:(

[Az]

33. We are a learning species

Evolutionarily we have replaced instinct with learning. Thus we learn from new experiences. As we grow older we find we have experienced much of what life has to offer. But since we are wired to learn new things novelty carries a special lure for us. Thus when something vastly different than what we normally experience occurrs we are often trapped by it. Like staring at an oddly defomed individual or an impending disaster. The newness of it captures a part of our mind and we try to take the entirety of it in.

[wabeewoman]

36. I read that the locals were mostly

fishermen and the receding sea left lots of fish which they ran to retrieve. Those already in the water were probably sucked out to sea. Also interesting was an account of a tsumani in Hawaii in the 90's that didn't cause much loss of life because an old man had been warning when the sea retreats, run to high ground and the people had listened. I also read some of those waves were traveling at 700 mph so there might not have been time to reach higher ground. Has anyone read or heard how far inland the wave went ? edited for clarity

[Jesus H. Christ]

37. Tsunamis aren't that high.

The the untrained eye, tsunamis don't look that much bigger than other waves. They're often only a few feet high, it's not like the big "tidal waves" you see in movies. But unlike other waves, tsunamis just keep coming and coming and coming.

Plus, if you're on a beach and a tsunamis about to hit, there's not a huge point in running, it's still gonna getcha.

[idiosyncratic]

41. Tsunamis can be several meters high, they just don't look like

it initially when viewed from the beach while they are still well offshore.

Some of the islands are only a few feet above sea level. The tsunami completely covered those islands.

[shanti]

42. these people weren't looking

they were getting the hell on! i am stunned by these photos: