It is something of a truism to point out that natural disasters - floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, sometimes even mudslides - can be as overwhelming as the disasters that human beings occasionally visit on each other. But it takes one of them to drive the lesson home and give it force and meaning.

One occurred Sunday, when the biggest earthquake in 40 years, deep beneath the Indian Ocean off the coast of Indonesia, generated massive tsunamis that zoomed through the water at hundreds of miles an hour and killed tens of thousands of people in Asia and Africa. Millions of others were made homeless. The scope and suddenness of the devastation makes one think of an attack by weapons of mass destruction, and the possibility that deadly waterborne diseases might emerge amid the devastation only compounds the shock and horror.

There is no way that a massive earthquake and a series of tsunamis could fail to inflict immense damage. Nevertheless, thousands of lives in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and elsewhere could have been saved if an early warning system similar to one that exists for countries (such as the United States) that border the Pacific Ocean had been in place.

If people had been able to move even a few hundred yards inland, they might have been saved. But in the absence of an alert system, it was not possible to give them a timely warning.

It had always been believed that countries bordering the Indian Ocean were relatively safe from earthquakes and the tsunamis they cause because the seismic activity in that region is much lower than it is along the notoriously unstable Pacific Rim.

But many scientists advised that a warning system in that part of the world should have been installed long ago, partly because coastal regions in many countries in the Indian Ocean are heavily populated. Just last June, at a meeting of a United Nations oceanographic commission, experts warned that the Indian Ocean had "a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis."

This warning should not have gone unheeded.

What remains in the aftermath is the need for a massive and lengthy relief operation by private organizations, the United Nations, the United States and others. The Bush administration has promised that this country will do all it can. Other governments should do the same.

- The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel