Indonesia hopes to have an early warning system able to issue tsunami alerts within five minutes on quake-prone Sumatra by the end of next year, and an integrated network covering the country by 2010, a senior official said.
JAKARTA — Indonesia hopes to have an early warning system able to issue tsunami alerts within five minutes on quake-prone Sumatra by the end of next year, and an integrated network covering the country by 2010, a senior official said.
Wendy Aritenang, a deputy minister at the Research and Technology Department who is overseeing development of the system, said on Thursday that initial equipment costs had been put at $120 million under a detailed plan for the project.
But Aritenang said even the most sophisticated system might not have helped much when a huge tsunami smashed into Aceh on Dec. 26, killing up to 160,000 people, because the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that triggered it was too close to the coastline.
For now, Aritenang said officials from various agencies and research bodies were focusing first on Sumatra's coast.
"It probably won't be five minutes but our goal is that. It depends on the funding, whether it comes down on schedule, whether contributions are realised," he said in an interview.
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"Of course, we have to start with cities which are more vulnerable to the hazard. My guess is at the end of next year, we can have quite an effective early warning system. The buoys will be there, the real-time tide gauges will be there."
Aritenang denied Indonesia had been slow to draw up plans for the tsunami early warning system, saying the media had shown little interest in what his agency was doing.
Germany has signed an agreement to help Indonesia while Japan and China are also expected to provide aid, he said.
Documents covering the five-year plan and given to Reuters call for upgraded equipment for measuring quakes and detecting tsunamis, with analysis of the information before it is sent out to communities via text messages and other means.
Buoys with sensors on the ocean floor, tide gauges, seismographs, global positioning system monitors and high-tech vessels will all feed information into 10 regional offices with a national centre in Jakarta staffed around the clock.
The documents show any quake above magnitude 7 would trigger a warning from the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency. Data would be studied to see if it could spark a tsunami, and a decision made about whether to issue an alert -- all within five minutes.
TSUNAMI HOTZONE
Aritenang said virtually the entire country, which lies along the "Pacific Ring of Fire" where plate boundaries intersect, was prone to tsunamis.
Indeed, including the Dec 26. waves off Sumatra, five of the six most deadly tsunamis in the last 25 years have been focused on the world's largest archipelago, the documents showed.
Underscoring Indonesia's seismic status, during the interview, Aritenang received a mobile phone text message from the geophysical agency about a 6.8 magnitude quake off Sumatra on Thursday morning.
There were no reports of casualties, just panic.
"Look, I just received some quake information," he said.
"But we would like to have more effective alarm information, including whether people should evacuate or not and how they evacuate. That's still a long way to go," Aritenang said.
The five-year plan calls for increased public awareness, the teaching in schools about tsunamis, evacuation drills, the stockpiling of vital supplies, escape routes for major population centres and city areas designated safe.
One hurdle was people tended to panic, Aritenang said, especially since images of the death and destruction from Aceh province were imprinted on every Indonesian's mind.
He cited Padang, a city of around one million people on Sumatra, which was recently jolted by a large quake.
"They didn't need the early warning system because the shake alerted them. They just ran to the hills and the city became blocked. They needed more than two hours to get to the hills."
Source: Reuters
