[afthonos]

Agreed. I think the background you shared shows one of the big problems in design: it's always easy to see the tsunami markers after the fact and say "the information was there all along". It's a lot harder to pick them out from a thousand information sources that are, a priori, just as compelling. Looking for those markers before design would have required looking at every bit of evidence at least as compelling as those markers, which would likely be cost-prohibitive.

[pbhjpbhj]

FWIW dreamcompiler said "simply siting the generators above ground".

That doesn't mean it's easy to realise the need to do that action, it means it's not a _complex_ action in itself.

[mikekchar]

It's actually kind of interesting. After the disaster, the nuclear power plant near me moved it's backup generators literally on the top of a neighbouring hill -- it's about 100 meters above the entire complex. And they made another backup one on another hill. Once you know the problem, it's not hard to fix it. I admit to being a bit worried that now the generators are too far away from the power plant so that when an earthquake happens (we're 50 years overdue for a regular terrible earthquake) it will be disconnected. The irony will be lost if it happens, I'm sure...