Five years after tsunami, warning system still patchy

Dec 13, 2009, 15:52 GMT

   Bangkok/Jakarta - The biggest tragedy of the December 26, 2004 tsunami was that had people been properly warned half an hour in advance, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. As it was, an estimated 230,000 people died in the disaster.

   Five years later, although systems are finally falling into place, there are still serious questions about the readiness of the region for a similar-scale disaster.

   For example, on September 30 the Jakarta-based Earthquake and Tsunami Centre failed to issue a tsunami warning after a powerful earthquake struck West Sumatra, said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a senior geology researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

   The quake, whose magnitude was initially measured at 7.6 on the Richter scale but later was revised up to 7.9, killed more than 1,100 people, mostly trapped in collapsed buildings and landslides. It also triggered a small tsunami, according to tide gauges off Sumatra.

   'Fortunately there was no big tsunami. If there had been a tsunami, I can't imagine how many people would have died,' Natawidjaja said.

   The 2004 tsunami was caused by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. An unusual vertical lift, caused when two undersea tectonic plates collided, triggered the killer wave that claimed 230,000 casualties in 11 countries around the Indian Ocean. More than 168,000 of the dead and missing came from Indonesia, mostly in Aceh province.

   Fauzi, head of the Jakarta-based Earthquake and Tsunami Centre who like many Indonesians only uses one name, said an integrated tsunami warning system - comprising seismometers, GPS instruments, tide gauges and buoys, as well as ocean bottom pressure sensors and satellite communications - should be ready by 2010.

   The system involves data collection from equipment placed in the field, transmitting it to a processing centre for analysis and sending early warnings to authorized parties and communities.

   So far, Indonesia has only completed the first level of the system, which primarily involves collection of data from seismometers installed in several regions, on which a tsunami warning is based, Fauzi said.

   A tsunami warning buoy off the coast of Sumatra, a donation from the US government, has been out of commission most of this year.

   'The buoy was vandalized, probably by fishermen, in March 2008,' said David McKennie, a senior advisor to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 'Until then it had operated very reliably.'

   A quick glance at the NOAA's tsunami website shows that the buoy placed off Nicobar Island, in the Indian Ocean, which is supposed to issue tsunami warnings to Thailand and India, has also been out of operation for months.

   Donated by USAID to Thailand, which lost 8,000 people in the tsunami - half of them foreign tourists - the Nicobar buoy was launched in December 2006 and worked fine until November 2007, when data retrieval became erratic. As of September 10 this year, the device has been totally out of commission after its battery expired.

   Thailand, which was responsible for maintaining it, has decided to buy three new buoys at the cost of about 200 million baht (6 million dollars) to replace the now defunct USAID-donated one and place two more in the Andaman Sea that will better cover the country's southern coastline.

   The Nicobar buoy is due to be replaced on December 15, and the old one will be repaired and kept as a spare. The two new ones will be put in place some time next year.

   'When all three are in the water, Thailand will be 100 per cent prepared to issue tsunami warnings,' said Viriya Mongkulveerapan, director of the National Disaster Warning Center.

   Viriya claimed that Thailand's system can provide a tsunami warning to beach-goers in resorts like Phuket and Phang Nga within three minutes of detecting a 7.5-magnitude earthquake, allowing for 25 minutes to evacuate people.

   Thailand has had its own problems with theft. The cables of one of the warning towers in Phuket were stolen prompting the, disaster warning centre to allow the towers (about 200 in total) to be used for community announcements on a daily basis.

   'This shows everyone that they are still working,' Viriya said

   Phuket residents note that most people on the island don't really seem to care, given what is deemed a remote possibility that another large-scale tsunami will hit and a general amnesia about the 2004 disaster. There are no commemorative events planned to mark the tragedy on the resort island.

   There is a similar lack of a 'culture of disaster preparedness' in Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are frequent, Natawidjaja said.

   'I don't think any region is ready for a major disaster like the 2004 tsunami,' he said. 'The recent earthquake in West Sumatra is an example that despite warnings, little was done towards mitigating the impact of earthquakes, such as strengthening buildings, enforcing building codes and identifying areas prone to landslides.'