SOMETHING went seriously wrong Monday when a tsunami crashed into the coast of Java killing some 520 people, a tragic toll likely to rise by half as much as more bodies of the missing are recovered. The Indonesian authorities knew there had been an underwater earthquake of 7.7 on the Richter scale some 300 miles to the south of Java. But for reasons that have yet to be explained officials were unable to warn the endangered areas, a failure which very probably contributed to the loss of life.
It is no excuse that this tragedy is relatively minor compared with the terrible disaster that befell Aceh on the Sumatran coast in December 2004. The plain fact is that hundreds of lives have been lost needlessly and as many as 50,000 people have been made homeless. The government in Jakarta needs to be taking a long hard look at what went wrong and acting rapidly to fix the problem.
In the wake of the Asian tsunami, it was agreed that all Asia-Pacific nations would install monitoring equipment and work with each other to share adequate warning of offshore earthquakes, including the likelihood of a tsunami smashing into the coast. Recent reports suggest that very few countries have progressed very far with this initiative.
The Indonesians now have monitoring devices off the Sumatra coast on which Aceh and its hinterland were devastated with the loss of 170,000 lives. But two years on, there is no such cover for the Javanese coast. Thus this week’s tsunami, the waves of which apparently reached 12 feet high at some points, crashed into the resorts of Pangandaran, West Java, and Cilacap, Central Java without warning.
In fact there was a warning, but only that given by the sea, as the water receded down the beaches shortly before the tidal wave hit. It is clear however that, for many, this terrifying sight did not give them enough time to rush to higher ground. The subsequent rescue effort appears to have been a credit to the authorities on this most highly populated Indonesian island. Nevertheless, this in no way makes up for the failure to give a proper alert.
The first important question is why warning systems have not been set up with sirens at firehouses or police stations. These are hardly sophisticated technologies.
They could be set off manually by the duty officer or activated remotely by a phone call from a tsunami control center in Jakarta. Of equal importance is the clear lack of an evacuation plan. Every community and every hotel or restaurant ought to have had an established procedure, which had been tested with real evacuation drills, to get people away from the danger areas, quickly and safely.
Instead of such systematic action, on Monday people were largely left to fend for themselves. Those in Jakarta must take a serious look into what went wrong and be prepared for the future.
