Tsunami-ravaged nations meet on warning system
Tsunami-ravaged nations meet on warning system
Joseph Coleman, Associated Press/Phuket, Thailand
Indonesia lacks tsunami-detecting tide gauges, and one of Sri Lanka's two earthquake monitoring stations is hobbled by software troubles. Thailand needs to upgrade communications to warn tourists of danger.
Government ministers from tsunami-ravaged Asian nations are meeting on the badly damaged resort island of Phuket on Friday and Saturday, assessing such needs as they plan for a proposed tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean.
The meeting, at a hotel just yards (meters) from a coast hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami disaster, follows a broad endorsement of a warning system by a UN conference in Japan last week. Several nations, including the United States and Germany, have drawn up plans for how to set the network up.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in Phuket ahead of the meeting, said on Thursday that his country would offer US$10 million toward the international warning system. Other countries have pledged at least US$8 million to the effort.
The Pacific Ocean is already covered by a U.S.-based warning system, extending protection to 26 countries. But the Indian Ocean region has no such safeguard, and experts say a warning network could have saved countless lives in last month's catastrophe.
The task will not be easy.
Southern Asian nations have some monitoring equipment for earthquakes and other natural phenomena, but officials say it needs to be expanded to tsunami detection. Bangladesh, for example, has a cyclone forecasting system. India has access to information from floating ocean monitors, under an international environmental program.
But with some of that equipment either outdated or in disrepair, officials are trying to figure out what additional hardware is needed: for example, more seismic stations to quickly register the magnitude of underwater quakes, more ocean monitors to alert officials that a tsunami is coming, and updated communications to get the warnings to coastal residents.
Then, the national warning systems have to be melded into a regional network. Experts also say much work remains to be done to assess the vulnerability of individual towns to tsunamis, build seawalls and breakwaters, establish evacuation routes and educate residents about what to do in an emergency.
"The weakest links are not the technical instruments ... it is the organization that assesses risk, delivers the message and takes action," Patricio Bernal, executive secretary of the UN's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, said at last week's meeting in Japan.
The United Nations has pushed for quick action while the world's attention is focused on the disaster, which killed more than 140,000 people across 11 nations. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has proposed a warning system for the Indian Ocean that would cost US$30 million and be running in a year.
Ministers from dozens of countries and UN agencies are participating in this weekend's meetings. Some were scheduled to take an hours-long tour of the areas savaged by the tsunami, which killed more than 5,300 people in Thailand, many of them foreign tourists. On Saturday, UN agencies are to brief ministers on early warning systems.
The Phuket meeting is one of a string of gatherings focused on the tsunami. Earlier this week, experts and officials met in Beijing, China. On Tuesday, delegates from hard-hit Indonesia called for creation of a network of earthquake detectors linked to the Global Positioning System, a satellite system run by the U.S. Defense Department that is widely used for commercial navigation.
The receivers would complement wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys to help experts predict when and where a tsunami is likely to strike.