No urgency for local quake alert system

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Imagine that densely populated Jakarta was rocked by an earthquake, then hit by a tsunami, on a scale similar to what happened in Aceh that killed tens of thousands of people and devastated buildings and infrastructure.

Of course, far more people would be killed and far greater property damage would occur.

The city administration, however, thinks that such an incident will never happen in the capital, or at the very least, it thinks that it does not need to anticipate such a massive natural disaster.

Secretary of the Jakarta Crisis Center, Soebagyo, said that the early warning system being developed by the center only focuses on how to deal with floods and fires; common occurrences in the city.

"We are not in a position to develop such an early warning system (for earthquakes and tsunami). Such work is the responsibility of the central government," he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Like other Indonesian regions, Jakarta is often rocked by tremors, but they have always been small scale and have not caused significant damage. Experts, however, warn that tsunami may also threaten coastal cities like Jakarta.

According to Soebagyo, Jakarta has no financial capability to develop early warning systems for earthquakes and the like. "Even if we had the money, we would probably allocate it to develop other facilities," he added.

He said that as a country whose territory was often hit by earthquakes, Indonesia should have early warning systems to minimize death and property losses.

Meanwhile, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Monday that Asian countries had begun work on establishing early warning systems.

He said that he had summoned the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) and the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG), as well as other related institutions, to work on the systems.

"This is to prevent massive loss of life from possible future earthquakes and natural disasters as well as to take preventive action," the President added.

Previously, BMG's head of earthquake early warning unit Budi Waluyo said that existing equipment was inadequate to monitor earthquakes.

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