A sensor system in Indonesia that could have warned of Sunday's huge waves was not working because it had been hit by lightning. In India, bureaucrats faxed a warning of possible disaster to the wrong official. A Thai meteorologist acting on a hunch sent an alert to radio stations, but it doesn't appear the warning was widely relayed.

Even if the Indian Ocean had an international tsunami alert system, like one in the Pacific, the warning likely would have come too late for the people of Sumatra, the Indonesian island closest to the epicenter of the magnitude 9 earthquake that set off the killer waves.