[Kabar-indonesia] Tsunami Experts: Alerts Only Good If Relayed To People [+ST Editorial]

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

also: ST Editorial: Staying alert for tsunamis

Tsunami Experts: Alerts Only Good If Relayed To People

BALI, Indonesia, Aug. 2 (AP) -- Experts assessing an Indian Ocean tsunami 
warning system said Wednesday they are already able to alert countries to the 
threat of killer waves: Now governments have to find a way to get those 
bulletins 
to coastal communities.

A tsunami that killed 600 people in Indonesia two weeks ago illustrated that 
point, said Patricio Bernal, the director of the U.N's Intergovernmental 
Oceanographic Commission, calling the disaster "very frustrating." 

Two regional agencies warned that a powerful earthquake could spawn 
destructive waves off Java island's southern coast, but officials in the capital 
Jakarta did not pass them on to local communities in time. 

"The system is only as good as the response," Joseph Chung of the U.N. 
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, said at the end of a three-day 
conference on the $126 million Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System. 

Responsibility does not simply lie with central government officials, he 
said, but communities themselves must also be involved in raising awareness. 

The U.N. working group meeting came 19 months after a 2004 quake and tsunami 
killed 216,000 people in a dozen nations. 

Twenty-three monitoring stations have since been put in place to quickly 
measure the strength of underwater quakes and assess the tsunami threat. 

That information is sent to the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center 
and the Japanese Meteorological Agency, which then relay it to individual 
countries at risk. 

Some of the experts who took part in the Bali meeting stressed the importance 
of educating children in schools about tsunamis, and having plans in place to 
quickly move vulnerable populations, such as the elderly or young children, 
away from the shore. 

They said it's also important to raise overall knowledge and awareness, such 
as placing signs on beaches and cards inside hotel rooms alerting visitors to 
move quickly away from the coast to higher ground if they feel an earthquake. 

Some countries - Indonesia, Pakistan and Iran - are especially vulnerable 
because their location on an arc of fault lines means waves can slam into 
coastlines as little as 20 minutes after a powerful quake. 

In those areas, especially quick reaction times must be built into training, 
said Peter Koltermann of UNESCO's tsunami unit. 

"Here, nobody has time to think because time is short," he said. "Here, the 
system is tested at full speed and no excuses." 

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The Straits Times (Singapore)
Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Editorial

Staying alert for tsunamis

PARTICIPANTS at an international meeting, which ends today in Bali, on
an early warning system for tsunamis, should take home a crucial
lesson. How could another wall of water have taken more than 600 lives
in Indonesia on July 17? Who could have guessed? Yet it is precisely
because of the unpredictability of earthquakes and tsunamis, except
that they are always imminent in the region where Indonesia sits, that
the country's woeful state of preparedness is so tragic. When anything
can happen, but it is impossible to say when, it becomes all the more
critical to be always ready for the worst. Readiness comes in three
parts. While the first two have been much debated and are being
addressed, a failure to recognise the third could undo all the work
now being pursued.

To begin, readiness involves having sensors in place. But the
technical aspect is actually the easy end. The science of detection
(if not prediction) is sufficiently developed. Even money is not such
a problem. Indeed, the spine of a system already exists: signs of the
July 17 offshore earthquake were rapidly detected and analysed by
monitoring centres in Japan and Hawaii. The tragedy is that warnings
failed to get to people before waves thundered ashore. So now, with
shortcomings in the 'last mile' of the system - the second part - in
the glare, they are being addressed. Which leads us to the third
issue. Indeed, this is the truly difficult bit: battling the
complacency that will surely come. Before 2004, no one in the region
had memories of tsunamis. And after last month's, there is no telling
when the next one might come. In another year? In 50? The danger is
that long periods of calm (which must be hoped for) will erode the
state of preparedness now building up. And as warning systems idle,
there will be the temptation to cut budgets - delaying improvements
here, and, more damagingly, putting off maintenance there. People,
too, will lower their guard; it is only human nature. Yet it is
exactly the responsibility of government - every single one on the
Indian Ocean rim - to fight the erosion in readiness that is
inevitable. And even more so for Indonesia, for it is the nation
closest to the Earth's faultlines of disaster.

Much necessary work is being put in place. But it will all prove
pointless without a commitment to never lower one's guard - no matter
how long nature stays benign.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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