Countries work on different plans to escape tsunami

Countries work on different plans to escape tsunami

Bill Tarrant, Reuters/Walagedo, Sri Lanka

The next time monster waves tear through this quiet little
village on Sri Lanka's ruined southern coast, the man who runs
the local cafe is poised to sound the alarm.

In Indonesia's devastated Aceh province, authorities are
planning "escape hills" or mammoth, manmade mounds where people
can run up to if there is another tsunami.

And Thailand is building 15-meter tall warning towers along
its southern coastline that will broadcast evacuation orders in
six languages.

There were no early warning systems or evacuation plans when
one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history set of a
tsunami that killed 228,000 people and left more than a million
homeless in a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean rim on Dec.
26.

Tsunami-affected countries are taking various routes to deal
with the next one which residents, unnerved with every big
aftershocks, fear can happen at any time.

While the United Nations is spearheading an effort to set up
early warning centers around the Indian Ocean rim, experts say
it's the "last mile" -- when centers cascade the alarm down to
remote fishing villages -- that is key to blunting the impact of
the next tsunami.

Walagedo, a tidy little hamlet about 80 kms south of Colombo,
is the first of Sri Lanka's Tsunami Protection Villages.

Chandrasana de Silva is in charge of sounding the horn, when
the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau calls to warn of an
approaching tsunami.

The horn sits atop a thin pole planted in a boulder on the
beach behind his house and cafe on the main road. A twisted blue
wire snakes out from a window by the phone, across the grass and
palmettos, through coconut trees and over the beach to the pole.

De Silva acknowledges this is not an ideal arrangement. For
one thing, he takes tourists on adventure excursions around Sri
Lanka and is not home a good deal of time.

"This is just temporary," he explains. "Next month Colombo
wants to connect direct to the siren."

Walagedo is meant to be the first of many villages with a
tsunami protection plan -- robust sirens on the beach, evacuation
route signs posted on utility poles, public awareness campaigns.

It took the tsunami two hours to reach Sri Lanka's coastline.
Indonesia was hit within a half hour.

Indonesia's reconstruction master plan proposes the
construction of escape hills, scattered along Aceh's coastline on
the northern tip of Sumatra. Made of concrete and covered with
grass, the hills would be capable of accommodating 1,000 people
at the flat top.

The hills would be situated to allow people to reach them
within five to 20 minutes. The government is also planning three-
story earthquake resistant "escape buildings".

"They can choose the escape hill, the escape building or the
escape roads," Chairani, head of the provincial public works
department in Aceh, said in an interview.

"The priority is escape roads and then the buildings. The
hills need a lot of land and that's expensive. Maybe an NGO (non-
governmental organization) has a budget for that."

One aid consultant working in Aceh was skeptical, saying the
hills would have to be the size of a city block at the base to
accommodate so many people at the top and would be impractical
in an urban setting.

"The construction costs, even by cheap Indonesian standards,
would be huge," the consultant said.

Thailand which staged the region's maiden evacuation drill on
its tourist mecca of Phuket island has moved the fastest.

By the end of the year, Thailand intends to put buoys on the
sea bottom that would transmit data of an approaching tsunami to
the new National Disaster Center, which will send out alerts to
media, text messages to vast mobile networks and trigger sirens
on 50 warning towers.

Foreigners spent US$1.8 billion in Phuket last year and
Thailand wants to broadcast a message that it is safe to stay on
the tsunami-battered island.

The March 28 earthquake on Sumatra tested India's
preparedness. Central and state governments issued alerts, and
people fled risk areas as soon they saw or heard the first news
flashes. The army, navy and air force went on alert.

But coastal communities along the Indian Ocean rim are often
poverty belts with poor access to technology that could miss out
on warnings, experts say.

So Sri Lanka is working on a "buffer zone" 100-200 meters from
the sea, where no new building will be allowed, including for
those who used to live by the beach. The decision has upset
fishermen and hoteliers alike.

Indonesia considered its own building exclusion zone along the
Aceh coastline, but abandoned the idea after public resistance.

An interim warning system for the Indian Ocean should be in
place by October, mainly by upgrading an existing network of
tidal gauges, Patricio Bernal, head of the UN Oceanographic body
charged with that task, told Reuters.

A more sophisticated system using undersea buoys transmitting
tsunami data to national warning systems should be ready before
the end of next year, he said.

Then it is up to individual governments to plan their own
emergency responses.

"Detecting a tsunami is only part of the problem," Bernal
said. "The big problem is how to prepare societies and local
populations so they can act appropriately to a warning."