Tsunami warnings were cancelled over concern for tourist industry

50 cancelled warnings

You mean it isn't the fault of the US government? Amazing

Yeah, and rightly so. 8.1 is something to be concerned about, but they obviously knew that if it was 8.1, it wouldn't be a problem and a warning wouldn't have been required. Do you not understand the difference between 8 and 9 on the richter scale? 9 is 10 times the magnitude of 8. If the richter scale wasn't logarithmic, it'd be like 8 was say.. 100, and 9 was 1000. They're so far out of eachother's league.

If they knew it wouldn't be a problem, why did they have a "CRISIS" meeting in the first place? They decided not to warn because of money.. Not because it wasn't dangerous.

An 8 will cause a tsunami as easy as a 9 will

It is probably protocol. They need to have a crisis meeting to decide whether or not something needs to be done. They obviously decided nothing needed to be done. The fact that an earthquake of the same magnitude (well, as far as they knew) lead to no problems, it would have been pretty safe to assume that there would be no problems this time around either. Obviously, there were, but they didn't have the correct information and we don't know who's fault that is just yet.

Do you not even understand the reason they did it? They believed it wouldn't cause any flooding. Giving a tsunami warning when there is no tsunami coming would have hurt the tourism industry. If no tsunami had come (which again, they clearly believed) and they had given a warning, everyone would have had to have been evacuated. Hotels would have had to refund customers, etc. It would have cost some pretty huge bucks. And guess who's head would be on the chopping block for that fuckup? Hindsight is 20/20.

They didn't know what we now know. If they had known it was a 9.1 or whatever it was, you can bet your ass they would have put the warning out!

And yes baddog, i'm aware that an 8.1 can cause a tsunami, but not nearly as great as the one caused by an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.1. A smaller earthquake obviously doesn't cause as much of the seafloor to rise up and thus causes a smaller tsunami.

The fact is, if they had been given correct information, they most likely would have acted accordingly.

Money makes the world go around