New system to give early warning of tsunamis

Andra Wisnu , The Jakarta Post , Kuta Wed, 11/12/2008 10:49 AM Bali
Local administration officials hope a new Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS), which was tested successfully on Tuesday, will be able alert tourists and Balinese of the possibility of a tsunami and help prevent fatalities.
I Nyoman Suarsa, head of services at the Bali Geophysics and Meteorology Agency (BMG), said the testing of the warning system was conducted to familiarize tourists and Balinese of the warning sound for an incoming tsunami.
"Hopefully, if there is a real threat of a tsunami, people will know to get away from the beaches," Suarsa said after supervising a test run in Kuta.
The test was a synchronized event, with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launching the warning system and running the test from Jakarta.
The TEWS connects warning siren towers in five provinces -- Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, West Sumatra, Bengkulu, Banten and Bali -- via satellite with regional tsunami centers in Medan, Padang, Tangerang, Yogyakarta, Denpasar, Kupang, Makassar, Manado, Ambon and Jayapura.
The test in Bali, which is one hour ahead of Jakarta, ran slightly late due to a longer-than-expected ceremonial procession in the capital. The alarm was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. East Indonesia Time and, when it didn't, officials scrambled to check whether the sirens were malfunctioning.
The test was, in the end, a success with the siren blaring loudly for a minute at around 12:10 p.m. East Indonesia Time.
"Now that the people know what a tsunami warning sounds like, and we know that it actually works, we can relax a little," Suarsa said.
"After the test, the authority to sound the sirens will be handed to the local administration, so we are now more prepared to deal with a tsunami," he said.
Six tsunami siren towers have been installed across Bali -- in Kuta, Jalan Double Six at Seminyak, Nusa Dua, Benoa Bay, Kedonganan and Sanur. All of them went off successfully, except for the one in Nusa Dua, due to an on-going international convention there.
Bali remains one of Indonesia's most tsunami prone provinces, as the region is flanked by two offshore tectonic plates north and south of the island.
Bali's BMG office detects an average of three earthquakes each day, Suarsa said, with intensities below 5.0 on the Richter scale.
In October, Bali experienced 110 earthquakes while its neighboring region, West Nusa Tenggara, experienced 281. The earthquakes were not felt because they were too low in magnitude, with epicenters far from the mainland.
Aceh holds the dubious distinction of being the area most recently affected by a disastrous tsunami. Parts of the island were leveled in 2004 following an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.15, which killed more than 200,000 people and displaced more than 1.7 million people in 12 countries.