M A I N   N E W S

No reliable warning system

New Delhi, December 27
As the toll of the devastating tsunamis lashing Southeast Asian coasts steadily mounts, Indian researchers are divided on whether an advance warning system can scale down such tragedies.

The Indian Meteorologi-cal Department’s Chennai centre warned of more tsunamis over the next couple of days, though smaller than the killer waves of Sunday that would gradually die down in one or two days.

Would the tsunami warning system equipped to alert countries several hours in advance have helped or is there no system that can really prevent the devastation? There cannot be a foolproof warning system, says V. Anantha Subramaniam, an engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology Chennai’s oceanography department.

“We have our systems of predicting cyclones and storms, but we never needed a system for tsunamis,” Subramanium told IANS on the telephone from Chennai.

“To my knowledge there can be no adequate warning system. A two-hour head start is the best we can do.” The tsunami in Indonesia was caused by an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale, with its epicentre in Sumatra.

Tsunamis, or giant tidal waves caused be disturbances under the sea, have hit India for the first time claiming at least 5,000 lives in the southern coasts and in its islands.

Since this phenomenon has been experienced mostly in the Pacific Ocean region stretching from Chile in Latin America to Japan in far-east Asia, the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System does not extend to the Indian Ocean.

Subramanium said India’s quake warning system had been alerted to the seismic disturbance on Sunday, but there would have been too little time to react to it as there was no way of telling the epicentre or the direction a tsunami would travel.

“The tsunamis travel at jet speeds like 800 km per hour — a couple of hours is all you get. We cannot predict tsunamis, but what is more important for India is to have a disaster mitigation centre that can look into relief and rehabilitation.” The global tsunami warning system set up in 1965 is said to predict where tsunamis will strike up to 14 hours in advance, using a network of seismic sensors and tidal gauges attached to buoys in the oceans.

According to scientists at the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), a reliable early detection system for tsunamis is yet to be developed, due to the small wave height a tsunami has during much of its journey through deep water. — IANS