Scientists get to work on early warning system

Scientists get to work on early warning system

Agencies, Kobe, Japan

More than 150 countries got to work on Tuesday on drafting a
global action plan to save lives during disasters, with the
United Nations saying the effort needed to be quicker and better
funded in the wake of the Asian tsunamis.

Around 4,000 scientists and officials would spend five days to
set goals for all nations ranging from an early-warning system
for disasters to standards for safe buildings, UN chief
humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland said.

The conference in the western Japanese city of Kobe is due to
set goals to be met by 2015, but Egeland urged a shorter time-
frame.

"Ten years from now, there should be no country without a
disaster prevention program," he said.

"I am acutely aware of how much is being spent on our being
fire brigades, of putting plaster on the wounds, and too little
preventing the devastation and the suffering in the first place,"
Egeland said.

Egeland, who famously accused rich countries of being
"stingy," called in Kobe for donors to devote money to prevention
measures and for more "newly rich" countries to contribute.

"I would propose that over the next 10 years a minimum of 10
percent of the large sums now spent on emergency relief by all
nations should be earmarked for disaster reduction," Egeland
said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the world on Tuesday to
learn from the killer Asian tsunami, saying spending now could
limit the loss of life and damage from inevitable natural
disasters.

Investing smaller sums before disasters could reduce the toll
such catastrophes take in lives and in money, Annan said at the
start of a 5-day conference in the Japanese city of Kobe, which
is marking the 10th anniversary of a quake that killed 6,433
people.

"It's not enough to pick up the pieces," Annan said in a video
message following a moment of silence for tsunami victims. "We
must draw on every lesson we can to avoid such catastrophes in
the future."

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed to the
conference that his government would help the effort by setting
up a global database on relief and reconstruction and a center on
water hazards.

The World Conference on Disaster Reduction was originally
designed as a meeting of scientists and low-level civil servants
on the 10th anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Kobe
from which the city has rapidly rebuilt.

But registration doubled after the Dec. 26 disaster which
killed more than 175,000 people and led to outrage as to why
Indian Ocean nations were so ill-prepared.

Egeland noted that the world had accurate means to predict
most disasters but the problem was how to get the message out in
poor countries which suffer worst.

"Early-warning systems targeting vulnerable communities should
be put in place in all disaster-prone areas," Egeland said.

"Children everywhere should be learning about safe havens
around them as part of their basic education. Communities
everywhere should be better trained to handle disasters," he
said.

The tsunamis have drawn an outpouring of global sympathy in
part because of the unprecedented international nature of the
natural disaster -- nationals of more than 50 countries died or
remain missing.

Some 478,100 were killed in disasters around the world since
1994, a drop by one-third compared with the previous decade, but
the number of people affected went up by 60 percent to 2.5
billion, according to figures provided by conference organizers.

In a separate development, tsunami experts on Tuesday proposed
making Dec. 26 an international day of commemoration of Asia's
tsunami disaster, saying the simple idea could be just as
effective as a pricey warning system in preparing people for the
giant waves.

"We have to talk about how we can maintain 100 years and 200
years from now that people know what a tsunami is," Harry Yeh, a
professor of tsunamis at Oregon State University, said on the
first day of a United Nations disaster reduction conference.

"Can we make December 26th an international tsunami day to
just keep reminding people of this event?" Yeh told a panel
discussion. "If we make this day an international holiday, people
will remember what a tsunami is."

"I think it will probably be a good idea," Laura Kong,
director of the International Tsunami Information Center of the
UN educational and scientific organization UNESCO, said of a
global tsunami day.

"I think it's such a tragic event but we can make this an
international awareness event and continue it over the years,"
Kong told AFP. "That's the challenge."

Fumihiko Imamura, head of the Disaster Control Research Center
of Japan, told a news conference: "We have reached consensus that
we need to create the memorial day. We will introduce this idea
widely during the conference."