Equipment needed to forecast future tsunami

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.