[ OUR OPINION ]

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Tsunami warning system
should have been in place

THE ISSUE Tens of thousands of lives were lost in a tsunami that struck nations in the area of the Indian Ocean.

LITTLE can be done to confront the power of tsunamis to destroy property, but measures can be done to protect human life from their devastation. Those measures are in place in the Pacific region, where most tsunamis occur, but officials in countries that rim the Indian Ocean, where tsunamis are rare, were caught by surprise. Belatedly, those protections are needed.

Tragedy provided the impetus for the government's establishment of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach in 1948, two years after an earthquake along Alaska's Aleutian island chain produced huge waves hours later that killed 159 people on the Big Island. The center has been connected to an international data and warning network since 1965.

Charles McCreery, head of the Ewa Beach facility, said the center tried frantically to alert countries in the Indian Ocean area about the oncoming waves but telephone numbers of appropriate officials in some countries were not immediately available. It did send an alert to 26 countries participating in the emergency warning system, including Thailand and Indonesia, within 15 minutes of the earthquake. India and Sri Lanka are not members.

Waves began striking nearby Indonesia's Sumatra coastline minutes after the earthquake, hit Thailand an hour later and within three hours reached India and Sri Lanka, finally crashing into Somalia in faraway Africa. Asian officials had plenty of time to alert people about the impending disaster but either lacked warning systems or failed to implement ones they had.

Thammasarote Smith, former forecaster at Thailand's Meteorological Department, told The Bangkok Post that the department "had up to an hour to announce the emergency message and evacuate people but they failed to do so. It is true than an earthquake is unpredictable, but a tsunami, which occurs after an earthquake, is predictable."

No tsunami had affected the Indian Ocean in more than 120 years, but that should not have caused countries in the area to be complacent. Indonesians have experienced numerous earthquakes and volcanoes, and Sunday's earthquake occurred in an undersea area where one plate of the earth's crust slips beneath another.

Experts at a June meeting of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission concluded that the "Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis" and should have a warning network.

Ted Murty, a tsunami expert at the University of Manitoba, told The New York Times that India, Thailand, Malaysia and other countries in the region "see this as a Pacific problem." He added, "I have a feeling that after this tragedy that may change."