No urgency for local quake alert system

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.