In years past, when Bangladesh gets severely flooded, thousands of people who live in the delta lose there bamboo make shift homes and their lives. With this tsunami, Bangladesh got lucky, very few casualties I believe, because of some wave pattern.
At the time I thought of a solution. Not just there, but wherever there is danger of flooding. in low lying areas
Here on the west coast and probably elsewhere also. Concrete barges and floats are built. Not for flood protection but to transport goods or for floating camps etc.
If a buildings foundation was built like a concrete barge, when a flood comes it would rise with the waters. It would be anchored in place by pilings sunk into the substratum.
I think the best protection is an early warning system. I was looking up tsunami warning systems on the internet. The Pacific Rim countries have an extensive system, because the ring of fire of volcanic activity. This system was never continued into the Indian Ocean because they thought the ring of fire did not extend there. The recent earthquake was at the end of the ring of fire. Also poorer nations surround the Indian ocean. If some of the billions of dollars now spent in aid to those nations were used to set up to make a world wide system of warning, many lives would have been preserved. That is what the UN,(aka called the wild beast by some who believe that a great tsunami of fire will do a far greater job of messing up the whole earth).
One town on the west coast, Port Alberni, situated at the end of an inlet exposed to the open Pacific had extensive damage when a earthquake in Alaska caused a tsunami, in 1964, I believe. They now have a loudspeaker system in low lying areas that serve as a warning alarm. The fire department test it once a day.
I was also looking up the speed of tsunami, the waves travel at some 300-500 miles per hour.
But seismic waves from earthquakes travel through the earth a far far greater speeds. (I can't find my notes, now, but I will repost the info.) Sri Lanka had a two hour time if a warning had been issued. The seismic waves would have reached Sri Lanka almost instantly.
Sumatra which was much closer to the earthquake center, hundred miles or so. So there would have been about a twenty minute time period to escape.
I will look up the websites again and repost some information.
belbab, who doesn't believe Old One plays games with peoples lives, especially the young ones and the elderly. Nature has dealt all of us quite a blow, it does not have to happen the next time.