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Quakes Test Tsunami Alert

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By MICHAEL CASEY, The Associated Press

Published: September 14, 2007

BANGKOK, Thailand - Indonesia used mosque loudspeakers to warn residents within minutes of a powerful earthquake.

In Bangladesh, volunteers with bullhorns told tourists and fishermen to flee to higher ground ahead of a possible tsunami.

A warning system installed after the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami appeared to work well after a string of earthquakes off Indonesia on Wednesday and Thursday, allowing officials to alert coastal communities by cell phone text message, e-mail and fax, officials said.

'They were quite fast in delivering the warning. The first warning went out in five or six minutes,' said Michael Rottmann, the U.N. special coordinator for the early warning system in Indonesia.

Fresh quakes and aftershocks hit the ocean off Indonesia on Thursday. They produced no tsunami, although an 8.4 quake the day before spawned a 10-foot-high tsunami that caused damage but no deaths. At least 10 people were killed and scores injured by the quakes.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster left 230,000 dead and was marked by failures to warn many communities, mostly because of faulty equipment, poor communications and cumbersome bureaucracy.

That prompted the United Nations and six governments, including the United States, to create the $130 million Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System, a network of seismographs, deep-sea monitoring buoys and water-pressure measurement devices.

The project includes gear and training for local officials to notify people about the threat of a tsunami.

The United Nations said the system has been operational since July 2006, allowing sensor data to be sent to the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Japan Meteorological Agency and then on to countries that could be affected by a tsunami.

Tsunami alerts this week managed to reach Australia's remote northwestern territories of Christmas and Cocos Islands, India's Andaman Islands and also beachfront communities in Sri Lanka that were damaged in 2004.

'We took all our valuable goods to the second floor of a neighbor, carried whatever we could take and went to a relative's home some seven miles away,' said G.G. Somaratne, of the southern Sri Lanka coastal town of Payagala, where he still is rebuilding a beach home destroyed in 2004.

In Bangladesh, volunteers with bullhorns warned villagers to evacuate to higher or inland areas. In the sea resort of Cox's Bazar, tourists were evacuated to inland hotels while the national soccer team rushed to a hilltop guest house.

In the city of Padang, Indonesia, where several buildings collapsed, the mayor, with the help of mosque loudspeakers, advised residents to flee to higher ground. Many fled when they felt a tremor.

'They got out of their houses and moved away from the water. The point is that people responded, which is something that wouldn't have happened two years ago,' said Richard Whelden, deputy mission director for USAID in Bangkok.

There was some overreaction. Some people in six Thai provinces rushed to the hills and remained there for two hours even though a tsunami alert had not been issued.

Progress in building the warning system was slowed by bickering over technical problems. Governments also were criticized for failing to educate citizens about the threat of tsunamis, bolster coastal infrastructure and establish ways to pass warnings to remote villages.

The system is expected to be completed in 2008, improving the accuracy of its data with more seismographs and at least 13 more pressure-measurement devices.

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