India to take lead in tsunami early warning system
By Trevor Robb
PERTH: India was on Wednesday selected to take the lead in implementing a tsunami early warning system for Indian Ocean countries after the devastating December waves that killed more than 200,000 people. The international warning system, expected to be in place by July 2006, brings together 27 nations and aims to give them enough time to alert their citizens to avoid a catastrophe.
“We already have a system that is providing warnings. There are already 25 national centres that have been established in the last three months,” said Patricio Bernal, head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
“That is a very important accomplishment. These centres are receiving information now from outside the region, from (the Pacific Ocean warning centres in) Honolulu and Tokyo.
“But we will establish a system that will provide information to those (national) centres from the Indian Ocean. This is the goal,” he said. A 9.3-magnitude quake off Indonesia’s Sumatra island triggered the December tsunami disaster which left at least 217,000 people dead around Indian Ocean shorelines. Indonesia, India, Thailand and Sri Lanka were worst affected.
Many nations did not warn their citizens to try to move to safety despite having hours to do so in some cases.
The commission, formed after the December tragedy, aims to establish a coordinated warning system.
“On December 26, we didn’t have any network that would allow us the confirmation of the presence of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean,” Bernal said.
“That is essential. We are working very fast to establish those networks, but those networks will be useless unless they are backed up by very strong national systems,” he said.
Each nation needed to build its own readiness to cope with a tsunami, educating the population on what to do and preparing emergency plans in advance, he said.
India will be the warning system’s first head, a position that will rotate to other nations every two years. Indonesia and Mauritius were elected vice-chairs.
The decision was made at a three-day meeting of some 100 scientists, meteorologists and government officials in the Western Australian state capital to discuss operational and information-sharing issues.
The UN commission, which was established at a conference of the UNESCO in Paris in June, also plans to enhance its operations in Perth to coordinate data and provide permanent secretariat support.
“There is a permanent job that needs to be done and there will be technical groups working permanently, supported by people from the UN, from our organisation, based here in Perth,” Bernal said.
The Perth conference will also determine exactly what type of standard data will be used for the system, with some nations reportedly reluctant to exchange real-time seismic data which is important to the effectiveness of the system.—AFP
