Equipment needed to forecast future tsunami

Abdul Khalik and Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta/Bandung

The government needs to invest in more equipment and must conduct more research in earthquake-prone areas nationwide to better monitor earthquakes activity.

The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency's (BMG) head of earthquake early prevention unit, Budi Waluyo, said on Monday that the existing equipment was inadequate to monitor earthquakes.

"We do not have adequate equipment and technology like China and Japan, despite the fact that tectonic earthquakes themselves are difficult to predict. China and Japan have established proper early warning systems for earthquakes," he said.

The existing equipment consists of leftovers from the Dutch colonial period, donations from the UNESCO in 1976, and from the French government in 1990.

Until now, Budi said, the Indonesian government has never bought equipment because of the high expensive involved.

"Besides adequate equipment, we also have to deploy scientists with all kinds of expertise to monitor and analyze changes in climate, gravitation and magnetic fields in all the areas that are prone to earthquakes. All of this, of course, will require huge sums of money," he added.

The massive magnitude 9.0 quake, which originated off Sumatra, and subsequent tsunamis are believed to have killed more than 23,000 people across Southeast and South Asia, including more than 7,000 in Indonesia.

Indonesia monitors earthquakes at more than 10 manned observation points across the country and five unmanned points built at weather monitoring stations, said Hiroshi Inoue, a senior researcher at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention in Tokyo.

Kyodo reported that the institute is working with the Indonesian government to establish an adequate earthquake monitoring network.

The manned observation points transmit data from seismometers via telephone, while some of the unmanned points are prone to breakdowns, Inoue said.

Indonesia's BMG has been trying to create a satellite-based data transmission network. According to the plan, about half of the network should have been completed by now, but the process was frustrated by a limited budget, he said.

In contrast, Japan, whose land area is about one-fifth the size of Indonesia, has about 1,000 observation points that are mostly automated. In addition, Japan has some underwater seismometers.

Indonesia, which lacks a sufficient number of quake observation points, monitors only inland earthquakes and relies on the U.S. Geological Survey for data concerning offshore earthquakes, including the one that devastated the region Sunday.

"I got the impression that the Indonesian government was telling the public to stay away from seashores after an earthquake," Inoue said as quoted by Kyodo. "The country was making efforts to establish a monitoring network with a limited budget. I am very sad that it could not be established in time."

International scientists said after the quake that the current international early warning system would have saved many lives but they admitted that predicting the precise time and place quakes would strike was difficult.

Budi said the BMG might have received warnings after the quake but there was no time to take action as both Aceh and North Sumatra provinces were too close to the epicenter.

"We usually receive warnings from the system for earthquakes with a magnitude over 6 on Richter scale. But in Sunday's case, there was nothing we could do in the several minutes that we had," he said.

Moving at about 800 to 900 kilometers per hour, the waves took only around 10 minutes to hit Meulaboh, the nearest city on Aceh's West coast, he added.

Phil McFadden, chief scientist with Geoscience Australia, said the current warning system might have saved lives in areas not too close to the epicenter, but it was useless to warn places near it.

"In places close to the epicenter of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that triggered the waves any warning given by an alert system similar to one that already operates in the Pacific likely would have been too late," he was quoted by AP as saying.

Dadang K. Mihardja of the Bandung Institute of Technology said a scientist with the institute had predicted in 2002 that there would be a major quake in the area within 170 years after the last one 1833.

"Danny H. Natawidjaja predicted as much in his dissertation but we do not have the access to decision makers and besides, we don't know the exact time and place of the earthquake either," he said.