Scientists have upgraded Hawaii's seismic monitors after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami prompted the U.S. government to improve the nation's tsunami warning systems.

But some of the upgrades are merely temporary and haven't been made to the highest standards. Slow-moving bureaucracy has delayed improvements in some cases.

Charles McCreery, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's director, initially thought the upgrades, which started in 2005, would take two or two and a half years.

He says the center is now "more than halfway done" with improvements but additional work remains.

The work includes moving some seismometers to better locations and getting landowner permission to install monitors on some properties.

"We initially thought it wouldn't take us this long. We were probably a little naive," McCreery said this week. Even so, he said the center has made progress. "Our capabilities today are hugely better today than they were just a few years ago."

Most of the major tsunamis to reach Hawaii have been triggered by earthquakes across the ocean, like the April 1946 tsunami that flooded Hilo and killed 159 people. That wave was generated by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the Aleutian Islands.

In the past two centuries, Hawaii has only been hit by two tsumanis generated by earthquakes located in the islands. They occurred in 1868 and 1975.

The 1975 temblor, magnitude 7.2, was centered off the coast of the Big Island. It set off a wave that crashed into 32 campers at Halape on the southern coast of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Two campers were killed and 19 injured.

After the Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed 230,000 people, Congress appropriated millions of dollars to upgrade the nation's tsunami warning networks.

Included in the funds was $922,000 to upgrade seismic monitors in Hawaii so the scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center could better predict what local earthquakes would generate deadly waves.

The most critical planned improvement was the installation of broadband seismometers, which can read a large range of earthquake vibrations.

Earthquakes release energy in a range of frequencies, so the more frequencies scientists are able to measure, the better they'll be able to locate earthquakes and estimate their magnitudes.

Until 2005, the center had short period monitors, which read only limited earthquake frequencies. It had one high-quality broadband station at its Ewa Beach headquarters and some lower-quality broadband stations on the Big Island.

The center also received data from Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory.

Since the Indian Ocean tsunami, the center has installed nine broadband stations around the islands from Kauai to the Big Island.

But four of them are in seismically noisy areas, like near the shore where the rumbling of surf may vibrate the ground. Others are near heavily developed areas where the sound of cars and other human population noise may disrupt readings.

"At least a couple of those stations are in locations that aren't ideal and we're trying to relocate those to better locations," McCreery said. "You want to put (a seismometer) someplace where it's relatively quiet"

Bureaucracy has significantly slowed progress. Two monitors, planned for state land in Lahainaluna on Maui and another on Molokai Ranch land in Kaluakoi, are being held up by the federal government's approval process.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration real estate division must approve agreements the center signs to borrow the land needed for the seismic monitors. The process can take years.

"The requirement to go through the NOAA real estate office for permitting has been a major impediment in establishing new field sites," said an internal memo prepared by three geophysicists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Insufficient staffing and budget uncertainties also hurt the project, said the memo, which was made public by the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The report was written by Brian Shiro, Kanoa Koyanagi and Barry Hirshorn of the tsunami warning center.

Jeff LaDouce, Pacific region director of the National Weather Service, which oversees the tsunami warning center, said the prolonged real estate legal review process is something that happens in government.

"There are hundreds of these things, if not thousands of these things, being worked through NOAA in general. And we don't have any corner on the market in priority," he said yesterday.

He admitted the seismic network upgrades would happen faster if he it had more money and people. But he said he can't have everything he wishes.

Both LaDouce and McCreery said remaining upgrades will come out of $125,000 allocated to the center each year for general maintenance and operations.

"If I had all the money in the world, I could go out and contract someone to do all these things," LaDouce said. "This is not something where I get everything I want at the expense of everyone else."