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 via mobile phones to the prime minister and officials in provinces where a tsunami could hit.

He said the NDWC was alert to earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean around the clock, and would tell people to evacuate if their province was at risk. However, too many warnings would only panic people and have a bad impact on tourism.

Read the full story:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/14Sep2007_news10.php  

Bridging the long ‘last mile’ in Sri Lanka / 2006/4 / Media Development / Publications / Home – World Association for Christian Communication

While the countries of South and Southeast Asia were largely unprepared to act on the tsunami, it was not really a complete surprise. As the killer waves originating from the ocean near Indonesia’s Sumatra Island radiated across the Indian Ocean at the speed of a jetliner, the alert about the impending tsunami moved through the Internet at the speed of light. Scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) in Hawaii, who had detected the extraordinary seismic activity, issued a local tsunami warning one hour and five minutes after the undersea quake.

That was a bit too late for Indonesia – which, being closest to the quake’s epicentre, was already hit – but it could have made a difference in countries further away, such as India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. As is now well established, an authentic warning was delivered to each country, but there were few listeners at the receiving end – and even fewer to act on it.

2004 December 26th

2005 March 28th

2006 July 17th

Three tsunamis within less than two years; and the clueless Indonesian government can’t still get its act together.

And faraway India is supposed to have issued a warning when there was no chance of a tsunami hitting India. CYA bureaucrat, I guess. A different error.

Sri Lanka radios are supposed to have carried the story within about 30 mts. If true, this is very good.

AP Report
Science and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman said Indonesia received the bulletins 45 minutes before the tsunami hit but did not announce them because they did not want to cause unnecessary alarm.

\”If it (the tsunami) did not occur, what would have happened?\” he told reporters in Jakarta, noting that there was no effective way to spread a warning without a system of sirens or alarms in place.

He said Indonesia now planned to speed up plans for a nationwide warning system.

Indonesia was hardest hit by a 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations _ with more than half the deaths occurring in Sumatra island\’s Aceh province.

Though the country started to install a warning system after that disaster, it is still in the early stages. The government had been planning to extend the alert system to Java _ which was hit by a quake in May that killed more than 5,800 people _ in 2007.

Answering reporters\’ questions as to why no warning was issued on Monday, Vice President Jusuf Kalla claimed there was no need because most people had fled inland after the earthquake, fearing a tsunami.

\”After the quake occurred, people ran to the hills … so in actual fact there was a kind of natural early warning system,\” he said. However, of dozens of people interviewed by The Associated Press in Pangandaran on Tuesday, only one person said he felt a slight tremor. None said there was a mass movement of people to higher ground before the tsunami, though some residents recognized the danger when they saw the wall of water approaching.