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Journalism of Courage
A working telephone line in a specialised seismographic station on the Indonesian island of Java could have provided an early warning about Sunday8217;s deadly tsunamis and might have saved lives in India and Sri Lanka, a media report said today.
But the monitoring station lacked the telephone connection needed to relay news of the impending disaster to Jakarta, newsnature.com said.
Officials in Jakarta were alerted to the earthquake that caused the giant waves by readings from the country8217;s other 60 or so seismographs, but a lack of data from the specialised Java station prevented them from issuing a tsunami warning, Nanang Puspito, head of the earthquake laboratory at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia, was quoted as saying. Countries such as Sri Lanka and India, which suffered thousands of casualties, could potentially have been warned some two hours before the waves completed the 1,500-kilometre journey from the earthquake8217;s epicentre off Indonesia, the report said.
The need for a system in the Indian Ocean similar to the one in the Pacific has been discussed at regular intervals by the inter-governmental Oceanographic Commission, the UN body that runs the Pacific network, since at least 1999. 8216;8216;It is always on the agenda,8217;8217; Vasily Titov, a tsunami researcher at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, was quoted as saying. But he said it has been difficult to raise the money required. 8216;8216;Only two weeks ago it would have sounded crazy,8217;8217; he said. 8216;8216;But it sounds very reasonable now. The millions of dollars needed would have saved thousands and thousands of lives.8217;8217;
