Tsunami warning buoys installed<\/p>\n
Reuters, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Indonesia has activated the first stage of a tsunami early
\nwarning system off the coast of Sumatra to prevent a repeat of
\nlast year's death toll in huge quake-triggered tidal waves that
\nleft 164,000 people dead or missing, officials said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Indonesian and German scientists installed two buoys and
\nplanted a pressure sensor on the seabed off the coast of western
\nSumatra this week as part of a five-year plan to prepare the
\ncountry's vulnerable coastlines for tsunamis, they said.<\/p>\n
\"The buoys will transmit data of sea tremors and pressure from
\nthe ocean sensor device,\" Edi Prihartono of the Agency for the
\nAssessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Another official from the same agency, Rahartono Fari, said
\ninformation from the buoys could be uplinked to a satellite and
\ntransmitted to a monitoring station near the city of Padang,
\nhalfway along the western coast of Sumatra.<\/p>\n
Another said authorities were aiming to install 20 buoys along
\nSumatra's coast by early 2009.<\/p>\n
India and Thailand are setting up similar systems.<\/p>\n
The 9.3 magnitude earthquake off Sumatra on Dec. 26, the
\nstrongest in four decades, unleashed the most devastating tsunami
\non record.<\/p>\n
There were no warning systems when the earthquake triggered an
\nunprecedented tsunami that is feared to have killed as many as
\n232,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations and left more than
\na million homeless.<\/p>\n
The worst affected area was Aceh province on the northern tip
\nof Sumatra, where the waves crashed up to eight kilometers
\ninland.<\/p>\n
Indian Ocean nations agreed at a meeting in August in Perth,
\nAustralia, to set up seven regional tsunami warning centers,
\nwhose job will be to send out advisories about potential tsunamis
\nto countries around the Indian Ocean rim.<\/p>\n
In documents seen by Reuters last May, the government spelled
\nout a five-year plan for upgraded equipment for measuring quakes
\nand detecting tsunamis, with analysis of the information before
\nit is sent out to communities via text messages and other means.<\/p>\n
The documents showed any quake above magnitude 7 would trigger
\na warning from the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency. Data
\nwould be studied to see if it could spark a tsunami, and a
\ndecision made about whether to issue an alert -- all within five
\nminutes.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/tsunami-warning-buoys-installed-1447893297",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
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