Asian tsunami warnings test post-2004 systems

Giant quakes off Indonesia caused panic but little damage, in a successful test of warning systems and evacuation plans introduced after the catastrophic 2004 Asian tsunami, experts said today.

In the tense hours that an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami watch remained in effect yesterday, Indonesian meteorologists were monitoring offshore buoys that measured the waves, confidently predicting that the likelihood of a large tsunami was minimal.
Another warning system has risen to the fore since 2004 as the use of smartphones and social media has exploded across Asia, helping to spread the word yesterday across other affected nations such as Thailand and India.

"The early warning system is working well," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang reassured the nation in a televised address yesterday. "So far, there is no tsunami threat."

Indonesia launched a USD 130-million tsunami warning system in November 2008 in a bid to prevent a repeat of tragedies like the 2004 disaster, which killed around 170,000 people in the archipelago nation alone.

"We knew that a tsunami could hit the coast in about 50 minutes, and we were monitoring for it," said Suharjono, head of the earthquakes department at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG).

"We also knew which parts of the coast to watch," he said, explaining that offshore buoys send signals to monitoring stations in Indonesia and beyond.

The BMKG reported only a few small tsunamis of up to 80 centimetres had hit Indonesia's coast, its reports confirmed by witnesses.

"I think the warning system responded very well, it's picking up the size of the event, it's picking up where it came from, it's saying this is shallow," said James Goff, director of the Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.
He said yesterday's alert was a "decent test" of the Indian Ocean tsunami warning system, an ambitious network of tidal gauges, deep ocean buoys and seismic monitors modelled on the decades-old Pacific model completed after the 2004 tsunami.
Suharjono said that in Indonesia, the data can be processed and disseminated within three minutes.

The local government is sent the information and is in charge of acting on it.