BANGKOK, 30 March 2005 — Last time around, the tsunami seemed to come out of nowhere. There were no blaring sirens to empty the beaches, no police loudspeakers warning fishermen to pull in their boats, no worried TV anchors urging people to move back from the coast.
The huge death toll reflected the surprise of nations across southern Asia and the near-total lack of warning systems.
Late Monday, when a 8.7-magnitude quake hammered the seafloor at 11:09 p.m. off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, it killed hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people on an island near the epicenter. But it did not generate killer waves like the ones on Dec. 26 that left more than 280,000 dead or missing in 11 countries.
But if it had, officials across South Asia insist things would have gone far differently. This time, there was a warning — at least in most places.
“There are still some gaps and weaknesses, but overall the government is satisfied with what we did last night,” said Suranand Vejjajiva, a minister in the Cabinet of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Within minutes of the quake, the US Geological Survey and Japan’s Meteorological Agency had reported a major temblor. Soon after, government officials, media outlets and scared residents began to respond:
In Thailand, radio stations repeated government warnings that the quake could set off another tsunami, and workers in beach hotels began pounding on guests’ doors.
Along India’s Tamil Nadu coast, police used loudspeakers to warn residents away from the sea.
In Sri Lanka, officials monitoring the US Geological Survey website received word of the quake and called disaster agencies who then alerted the media. Police and the military used loudspeakers to urge coastal residents to move to higher ground immediately.
Shortly after, Buddhist monasteries began playing middle-of-the-night prayers over loudspeakers, waking up residents who switched on radios and televisions for more news.
Sometimes, the news was disseminated through official channels, but often it spread through an ad hoc communications network, bouncing from officials to TV stations to terrified residents, many still in mourning from the December tsunami. But the end result: Word spread quickly, if informally, across thousands of miles.
“One of our neighbors knocked at our door and told us the tsunami was coming, so we ran,” said M. Chandralatha, 64, a Sri Lankan woman clutching her six-year-old grandson. Very little tsunami detection equipment has been installed in the region since December, though plans have been made to create detection systems.
Alert networks — such as mass text messages to mobile phones — are also being developed, but nothing major has been implemented yet.
Still, the cobbled-together system seemed to work reasonably well in most areas.
“I am quite satisfied with the response time,” said R. Santhanam, the top disaster response official in India’s Tamil Nadu state. Despite the late hour, state officials were able to contact district administrators and police officials “and everybody swung into action.”
That response was a far cry from Dec. 26, when India’s bloated bureaucracy wasted hours of potential warning time as the alert followed a tortuous procedural path through various ministries and sub-ministries.
But things went less smoothly on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, near both Monday’s quake and the one that set off the tsunami three months ago.
There, nature itself was the alarm. People were shaken awake by powerful tremors in the town of Banda Aceh, where hundreds of thousands of people still live in refugee camps in scenes of warlike devastation.
Thousands of panicked people in Banda Aceh headed for high ground, leaving in pickup trucks, on motorbikes or on foot.
Residents said the first official announcement came several hours later, when police told people no tsunami appeared to be approaching.
But Banda Aceh police chief Lt. Col. Eko Daniyanto said his men used loudspeakers to urge calm after police officers stationed near the beach had reported there had been no rise in the sea after the quake.”
