The Samoa tsunami that cost perhaps 200 lives in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga left behind it one clear fact: a high proportion of casualties and damages were inflicted on coastal resorts. So what are the lessons here?
“The Samoan experience begs the question for many coastal resorts in the Pacific about the appropriate location for accommodation,” says David Beirman, the author of Restoring Tourism Destinations in Crisis. He adds:
“The Samoan tsunami now challenges the wisdom of this sort of location for resorts.”
“If there is a lesson to be learned from the Samoan tsunami all coastal resorts need to re-think where accommodation is located while giving guests as much access and visibility to the beach as possible,” he writes in E-Hotelier.
Client demand and the marketability for beachfront and on the water accommodation should be tempered by the first duty of any hospitality business — the safety of guests, he writes.
Governments which are heavily dependent on resort based tourism may find it in their best interests to subsidize reconstruction of resorts to ensure they are secure from tsunamis and certainly impose a stricter regulatory regime to protect resort owners, employees and guests.
Another suggestion from the Christian Science Monitor is not to rely on early warning systems to such massive waves of up to 650 feet inland followed by earthquakes, as happened in the South Pacific.
"People assume that if they have an early-warning system, their problems are solved," said James Goff, director of the Australian Tsunami Research Centre, based at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He added:
"But it’s only one of a suite of ways of being aware what’s going on. What’s really needed is education about the natural indicators. If you live by the coast and there’s a very large earthquake, or if you see the water receding very quickly and going much lower than low tide, you need to move uphill."
By David Wilkening
