The National Disaster Warning centre (NDWC) Thailand, has defended its decision not to issue an early tsunami alert after the 8.4-magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island on Wednesday evening. Instead, the NDWC made a broadcast three hours later telling people there was no cause for alarm. Centre chairman Smith Dharmasarojana said yesterday the delay was based on a thorough analysis of the situation.
The NDWC decided against a sudden TV broadcast to warn people about a possible tsunami because it predicted the quake, which struck about 6.10pm, would not cause giant waves in Thailand. The NDWC’s broadcast three hours after the first quake was mainly aimed at calming people down.
He said the centre followed warning procedures correctly, including sending 2,800 short messages…
By Nuwan Waidyanatha
The Hazard Information Hub (HIH), operated by Sarvodaya as part of the Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination Project (HazInfo) to disseminate Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) risk information to the villages in Sri Lanka, monitored the recent tsunami drills conducted in the Pacific by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in the USA. The HazInfo project initiated by LIRNEasia, is a multipartner initiative aimed at tackling the “last-mile” challenges in developing an all-hazards approach to disaster management and mitigation.
Tags: Department of Meteorology, GUI, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, International Tsunami Information Center, Pacific Ocean, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Sarvodaya, simulation, Sri Lanka, United States, web interface, web-product, west coast, West Coast-Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, XML.
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4988492.stm
More than 30 countries around the Pacific Ocean have tested a system to warn them of approaching tsunamis.
The exercise began with a mock alert at the Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.
An earthquake with a magnitude 9.2 was imagined to have struck near the coast of Chile, sending a tsunami racing across the eastern Pacific.
A second mock earthquake alert, north of the Philippines, will provide a further test on Wednesday.
Governments will report back on how efficiently they received the tsunami warnings, relayed through various circuits including weather services, emails and faxes.
The drill, co-ordinated by the Hawaii warning centre, will also measure how well the message is relayed through local emergency systems.
‘Already a success’
At the start of the test, a beeping noise sounded throughout the warning…
Tags: American Samoa, Asia-Pacific, BBC, Charles McCreery, Chile, emergency systems, Ewa Beach, Hawaii, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, local emergency systems, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean, Thailand, the Philippines, tsunami, Tsunami Warning Centre, weather services.
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