Early-warning systemsTen years after Asian tsunami, too few early-warning buoys are deployed

Ten years after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed more than 220,000 people across twelve countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and Myanmar, some residents of villages close to the shores are uncertain of how they will be notified or how they will react to a future tsunami.

Akram bin M. Thaib, a resident of Banda Aceh, capital of Indonesia’s northern Aceh province, plans to rely on insects. “If ants in the ground start climbing to the roof, it means in three days a flood will come.” Scientists have actually studied whether the behavior of ants or dogs is an early indicator of earthquakes.

Many of the villages affected by the magnitude-9.1 tsunami still lack ocean buoys that help detect tsunamis, sirens to alert residents, and a protocol for residents to follow when sirens are issued. In 2005 an intergovernmental coordination group for the region was assigned to design ways to warn people about future tsunamis, but many villagers still are unsure of how to respond when they hear tsunami sirens. “While the establishment of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System is a major leap forward, ‘the last mile’ outreach continues to be the challenge in the region,” said Sanjay Kumar Srivastava, regional adviser on disaster risk reduction to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific in Bangkok. “Gaps may exist in local level preparedness, including those related to dissemination of warnings.”

Bloomberg News reports that when an earthquake struck the province of Aceh, Indonesia in April 2012, 63 percent of people did not hear the sirens. Furthermore, 75 percent of residents fled in vehicles, causing traffic jams. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency, note that residents were advised against evacuating in their cars during drills.

In Thailand, parts of the country hit by the tsunami rely on three buoys and alerts from other countries to issue warnings. Those warnings are then sent as SMS messages to more than twenty million mobile phone users, a call center with eight hotlines, government websites, a countrywide network of over 800 large and small warning towers, and to radios monitored by village chiefs. Phang Nga province in southern Thailand had eighteen warning towers, yet about 900 residents of Ban Nam Khem, a small fishing village within the province, died when the 2004 tsunami struck. Villages have now formed their own tsunami watch group to complement the government sirens. “I don’t believe in the tsunami system, I believe in myself more,” said Banlue Chusilp, a forty-nine-year-old former fisherman who now works as a gardener at the tsunami memorial in the village and is a member of the volunteer group.