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Comment by ffffruit | Hacker News Reader

I find the comparison with SE Asia rather poor with regards to investment as I've been to Sri Lanka and the amount of money that is available for basic infrastructure, let alone anti-tsunami barricades, is negligible compared to Japan unfortunately.

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From the article: "unlike Southeast Asians, many of whom died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because they lingered near the coast despite clear warnings to flee"

Interesting way to put it (implying that the issue was behavioral/cultural rather than one of engineering)

I think they were referring to the annual drills institutionalized in Japan. From the drills conducted annually, people knew how to react to disasters, whereas people who don't experience drills (in, say SEA) ignored the warnings or didn't know how to react since they had no reference.

Most South and SE asians didn't even knew the word tsunami before 2004 December 26, including me. There was no proper alert system, awareness or knowledge of the impact at that time and most were caught surprised.

Japan was much better prepared because they have been facing this so long. Blaming this as a behavioural/cultural thing is ridiculous. I would bet that all the South and SE asian countries are better prepared for the next tsunami. We have been already through multiple tsunami warnings from then which did the job pretty well.

I would think it was part engineering as they probably did not have, and do not seem to have now, any sort of alarming system in place. (at least not at the coastal places I visited)

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