HB lacks cash for sea-wall security

In light of the recent tsunami's I made some comments to my mum about installing sea wall style protection in areas that are known to be tsunami targets, or potential targets, then later in the day I found a small article in the Hawkes Bay Today paper:

Hawke's Bay ratepayers can forget about building sea walls to protect their properties, says regional council environment manager Murry Buchanan.
The chances of public money going into big protection projects are virtually nil, because Hawkes Bay has a long coastline and not enough money.
The best strategy for now is "not to let people put houses and buildings and roads in places that are going to erode".
The council has produced a coastal plan identifying areas at most risk of erosion during the next 100 years, and Mr Buchanan advises home builders to think carefully about the threat of higher seas and erosion before building on coastal margins.

Now, whilst everyones donating money for relief, medical supplies, and an eventual rebuilding effort, I've not yet seen anything mentioned of potential "prevention" or "minimalisation" projects.  Not being technically minded - I have no idea if anything of the sort is doable; but I have this idea of giant underwater sea walls, not a solid wall, but broken up at different angles that would somewhat disrupted the flow of water from a tidal wave - sure it won't be 100% effective, more than likely it wouldn't be anywhere near 25% effective, but lowering of the effects would be better - right?

Anyway, back to the Hawkes Bay Today article - there won't be any sea wall protection because we have no money, fair enough - how about asking for donations?  I can't remember exactly where I was reading it, but one blogger commented on why people people are donating to the tsunami relief in drones, when hardly anyone did for 9/11, or the war ( I believe the post came to conclusion of it being due to the tsunami's being a natural disaster that could happen to anyone, as opposed to a man made terrorist attack ).  So whats my point?  To be honest, I'm not actually sure - my thought train is wandering about "no one donates money towards the prevention of disasters" - I'm thinkings its because there no visiable sign of a satisfactory endpoint.

Think about it, with disaster relief - theres destruction to be rebuilt, theres families to reunite and heal, it takes time - but you can measure its progress; but with disaster prevention - you spend millions building an infrastructure that may never be put to use and may be deemed to many as a "waste of taxpayers money", if the infrastructure does its job and silently does it job preventing and minimising disasters ( a sea wall disrupting waves making the shore line just appear as an overly hightide is likely to go unnoticed by the majority of the people ) the taxpayers see no visible benefit - and that means a job well done; but if the infrastructure fails you get huge public outcry; and if infractructure 'mostly works' and 100 people die instead of 100,000 people dying - what do you get?  Marginal public outcry over the deaths, but a majority of praise of the forthought of those funding the preventative project.

I don't really have a point, just a bunch of thoughts on the potential disasters all around us.

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