RI to hold conference on tsunami early warning system
Veeramalla Anjaiah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesia -- a country that has suffered more than 115,000 deaths in the Dec. 26 disaster -- will host an international conference primarily focused on a tsunami early warning system in close cooperation with Germany, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda announced in Jakarta.
Germany is the most generous country in the world in terms of aid pledges with a total of US$1.17 billion -- $650 million from government and $522 million from public donations -- to the tsunami-affected countries.
"During my recent visit to Germany, Chancellor (Gerhard) Schroeder offered his country's help in establishing an early warning system in Indonesia. Germany will be sending its geological experts to Indonesia in February to help Indonesia in hosting the international conference on a tsunami early warning system this year," Hassan said on Tuesday at the Foreign Policy Breakfast Gathering, which was attended by editors, scholars and public figures.
The Dec. 26 tsunami, which was triggered by a 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake off Aceh, has killed more than 175,000 people in Indonesia and 11 other countries.
The plan to establish a tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean region and Southeast Asia is a follow up to the consensus reached at the Jan. 6 Special ASEAN Leaders' Meeting on tsunami disaster in Jakarta.
The system, according to Hassan, will not be exclusively for Aceh but for the whole of Indonesia, an archipelagic nation with thousands of islands.
"The whole country faces the threat of a tsunami. German experts showed me the satellite pictures how several islands of ours moved from their original place on Dec. 26. That's why we need this warning system," Hassan said.
The conference will discuss regional cooperation on setting up the early warning system for hydro-meteorological and geological hazards on a global scale.
Last week, the United Nations organized a conference on Mauritius with a special agenda on setting up an early warning system in the Indian Ocean.
Japan is also currently holding an international conference, which opened on Tuesday, on disaster reduction in Kobe with a similar agenda.
Japan, which pledged $500 million in aid to tsunami-hit countries, has also promised $4 million for the establishment of the warning system.
But the Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported last week quoting UNESCO's Koichiro Matsuura that around $30 million was needed for the regional warning system and $1-$2 million per year to run it.
Given the unprecedented global response, which so far has seen at least $7 billion raised, the money should not be a problem. The real problems will be in setting up the system's headquarters that can efficiently share the data among all the countries concerned in addition to running public education campaigns about the tsunami system.
Apparently, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore all have shown an interest in hosting the regional tsunami early warning center, which will likely be established by 2006. That will likely be decided during a regional ministerial meeting in Thailand on Jan. 28. The UN is also planning to have a global warning system in place by 2007.
According to experts on the subject, thousands of lives would have been spared had there been an effective warning system after the Dec. 26 earthquake.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent an alert to 26 Pacific countries, including Indonesia and Thailand, just after the quake. But due to a lack of an effective communication system, the alert was never communicated to the people in Aceh, and came about an hour too late in southern Thailand.