WHAT HAS HAPPENED CAN HAPPEN: COMMUNICATING COMMONSENSE WARNINGS ABOUT THE FUTURE

“What we got here is failure to communicate.” Such was the explanation provided by the Prison Captain in the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke as he observed the suffering he had inflicted on the prisoner played by actor Paul Newman. Fifty years later “A Failure to Communicate” was clearly the cause for the $150 billion-dollar “Harvey” and “Maria” disasters. The names “Harvey” and “Maria” are shown in quotes because of the blame that is most commonly ascribed to Nature when it is human miscommunication that provides the principal cause for so-called “natural” disasters. It is the responsibility of scientists, and of geologists in particular, to emphasize that Nature is much more the solution than the cause of such disasters. While natural processes certainly contribute to what happens during extreme events, it is Nature itself that provides the most effective warnings for those very events. An excellent example was provided by the greatest dollar-damage disaster in recent human history: the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami in northeastern Honshu, Japan. The greatest economic loss from that disaster resulted from false reliance on model-based probabilistic risk assessments coupled with failure to act upon geological evidence that demonstrated the reality of the risk. Much of the loss of life in the disaster resulted from over-reliance on government-prescribed warning and protection measures, coupled with failure to heed the warnings provided by actual occurrences of past tsunami. Geologists have a special responsibility in regard to hazards because they are best placed to convey Nature's message: "What has happened can happen!"