Cornell tsunami scientist Phil Liu is assembling his team in Sri Lanka, Oregon State’s Harry Yeh’s gang is in India, a Japanese team has gone to Indonesia, and scientists from Russia, Korea, Australia and elsewhere are on their way, hoping to unlock secrets that could lead to minimised destruction the next time around.‘‘Much of the tsunami evidence is ephemeral,’’ said Bretwood Higman, a University of Washington tsunami researcher who is on Liu’s team. ‘‘I wish we could have gotten in sooner, but this is still an opportunity of a lifetime.’’Before most of the world learned a massive earthquake had spawned a killer wave in the Indian Ocean, tsunami scientists were frantically debating on what to do with this ‘‘opportunity’’.Suggestions from certain researchers, one of delaying for the sake of humanitarian work and the other for the sake of creating some over-arching bureaucracy, prompted vigorous opposition. ‘‘Everybody’s saying we need two or three weeks but I found out yesterday that (a Japanese team is) already in Thailand,’’ said Andrew Moore of Kent State. Moore said he ‘‘strongly disagreed’’ with Borrero’s call for delay, arguing too much information could be lost forever.‘‘Despite our personal reactions, there is still science to consider,’’ said Phil Watts of Applied Fluids Engineering in Long Beach, California. ‘‘This should happen as soon as possible,’’ agreed Peter Pissierssens, head of the UNESCO oceanographic commission.To delay and diminish this scientific opportunity, Barbara Keating, president of the Tsunami Society said, would be a disservice to humanity. With that, the tsunami detectives went on the hunt. The last time the scientific community was able to study a tsunami produced by such a massive subduction earthquake was in Alaska, 1964. —NYT
