Indonesia eyes quick tsunami warning by end 2006

Indonesia eyes quick tsunami warning by end 2006

Dean Yates and Achmad Sukarsono
Reuters/Jakarta

Indonesia hopes to have an early warning system able to issue
tsunami alerts within five minutes on quake-prone Sumatra by the
end of next year, and an integrated network covering the country
by 2010, a senior official said.

Wendy Aritenang, a deputy minister at the Research and
Technology Department who is overseeing development of the
system, said on Thursday that initial equipment costs had been
put at $120 million under a detailed plan for the project.

But Aritenang said even the most sophisticated system might
not have helped much when a huge tsunami smashed into Aceh on
Dec. 26, killing up to 160,000 people, because the 9.0 magnitude
earthquake that triggered it was too close to the coastline.

For now, Aritenang said officials from various agencies and
research bodies were focusing first on Sumatra's coast.

"It probably won't be five minutes but our goal is that. It
depends on the funding, whether it comes down on schedule,
whether contributions are realized," he said in an interview.

"Of course, we have to start with cities which are more
vulnerable to the hazard. My guess is at the end of next year, we
can have quite an effective early warning system. The buoys will
be there, the real-time tide gauges will be there."

Aritenang denied Indonesia had been slow to draw up plans for
the tsunami early warning system, saying the media had shown
little interest in what his agency was doing.

Germany has signed an agreement to help Indonesia while Japan
and China are also expected to provide aid, he said.

Documents covering the five-year plan and given to Reuters
call for upgraded equipment for measuring quakes and detecting
tsunamis, with analysis of the information before it is sent out
to communities via text messages and other means.

Buoys with sensors on the ocean floor, tide gauges,
seismographs, global positioning system monitors and high-tech
vessels will all feed information into 10 regional offices with a
national center in Jakarta staffed around the clock.

The documents show any quake above magnitude 7 would trigger a
warning from the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency. Data
would be studied to see if it could spark a tsunami, and a
decision made about whether to issue an alert -- all within five
minutes.

Aritenang said virtually the entire country, which lies along
the "Pacific Ring of Fire" where plate boundaries intersect, was
prone to tsunamis.

Indeed, including the Dec 26. waves off Sumatra, five of the
six most deadly tsunamis in the last 25 years have been focused
on the world's largest archipelago, the documents showed.

Underscoring Indonesia's seismic status, during the interview,
Aritenang received a mobile phone text message from the
geophysical agency about a 6.8 magnitude quake off Sumatra on
Thursday morning.

There were no reports of casualties, just panic.

"Look, I just received some quake information," he said.

"But we would like to have more effective alarm information,
including whether people should evacuate or not and how they
evacuate. That's still a long way to go," Aritenang said.

The five-year plan calls for increased public awareness, the
teaching in schools about tsunamis, evacuation drills, the
stockpiling of vital supplies, escape routes for major population
centers and city areas designated safe.

One hurdle was people tended to panic, Aritenang said,
especially since images of the death and destruction from Aceh
province were imprinted on every Indonesian's mind.

He cited Padang, a city of around one million people on
Sumatra, which was recently jolted by a large quake.

"They didn't need the early warning system because the shake
alerted them. They just ran to the hills and the city became
blocked. They needed more than two hours to get to the hills."