6 min readDec 26, 2024 01:12 PM IST
First published on: Dec 26, 2024 at 07:10 AM IST
Twenty years ago, on December 26, 2004, people rushed to their dictionaries. Google Search was not yet sufficiently popular. no one wanted to express ignorance of the word “tsunami”. As the oceans erupted with a 9.1 magnitude earthquake below the seabed off the coastline of Indonesia, more than 2,30,000 people lost their lives as a result of the wall of water that travelled to the Aceh area of Indonesia, to the resorts along the Thailand coast, the Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands and then the Indian and Sri Lankan coastlines. The destruction of lives and livelihoods was enormous. The lack of any warning system or proper education about tsunamis was evident as people were caught by surprise when the high waves flooded coastlines around the Indian Ocean basin, making it one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory.
Twenty years later, to pay homage to those who lost their lives and others who suffered some of the worst privations, I travelled to the A&N Islands at the invitation of the Headquarters Andaman and Nicobar Command (HQ ANC), the only Joint Services Command of the Indian Armed Forces. HQ ANC observed the tragedy of the tsunami in what I considered the most appropriate way — conducting a knowledge exchange event over two days. It optimally combined three aspects: First, it devoted almost half the event to the exchange of technical knowledge on disaster management and the status of disaster warning systems as related to tsunamis and other potential disasters for a general build-up of knowledge. Second, it called in a few tsunami survivors and experienced hands who escaped its ravages. Third, it devoted some time to the geopolitical and geostrategic aspects of the security environment in the Indian Ocean Region. Service officers from 10 Indian Ocean Region (IOR) countries also attended the event. They, too, received an all-round education on humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR) operations along with strategic security.
The emotions flowed as Meghana Rajashekhar, daughter of a late Air Force officer, spoke of her harrowing experience as a 12-year-old who lost both her parents in Car Nicobar Island on that fateful morning. She was carried into the sea by the giant waves and managed to remain afloat atop some debris for two days before being swept onto an island from where she was finally rescued as a traumatised child.
The tsunami struck the A&N Islands within 20 minutes of the undersea earthquake and travelled 1,200 km to Chennai and Sri Lanka in just two hours. An early warning (EW) system could have warned the Indian and Sri Lankan coastlines of the approaching waves. At that time, India’s seismic monitoring network was limited, and the country relied heavily on international seismic data. This led to a delay in detecting the earthquake and issuing a tsunami warning.
Although the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) Hyderabad had a tsunami detection system in place, it was not designed to detect tsunamis triggered by distant earthquakes. The system relied on seismic data and could not detect tsunami waves in real time.
Along with the communication gaps, there were knowledge and information gaps as well. Little was known about how a tsunami manifests along a coastline. It is this failure of detection and of EW that led to the finalisation of the ongoing process that had commenced during NDA-1 after the super cyclone Paradip and reinforced by the Bhuj earthquake.
The Disaster Management Act of India was finally enacted a year after the tsunami. The government then established the Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC) at (INCOIS), Hyderabad and it has been operational since October 2007. It comprises a real-time seismic monitoring and sea-level network. The ITEWC is capable of detecting tsunamigenic earthquakes occurring in the Indian Ocean as well as in global oceans within 10 minutes of their occurrence and disseminates advisories to the concerned authorities. The Indian system provides tsunami-related and sea surge-based information to 26 countries as part of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO) framework.
Odisha has made significant progress in preparing its coastal villages for tsunami threats. Currently, 24 coastal villages in Odisha have been recognised as “tsunami ready”. The latter implies a certain threshold in preparedness to include response and evacuation plans, mock exercises, and community awareness with signages indicating escape routes. Odisha is working towards extending this to all coastal villages.
The NDMA’s intent is similar and goes along with the mantra spelt out in the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Agenda on DRR. In it, EW forms a significant part now that the dissemination system is maturing with the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Information received from ITEWC can be appropriately drafted into warnings and advisories and disseminated to millions of mobile phones whose numbers are captured through a polygon drawn on a GIS map. This necessitates an effective prediction system based on risk mapping, which too is a part of the Ten Point Agenda. In due course, a modern cell broadcast system will be fielded with far greater reliability and speed of delivery of messages. This will go well beyond tsunamis and cyclones, to include hazards such as lightning and Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF), of the type that affected Sikkim in October 2023.
All of the above and more, related to the current and future state of DRR in India, were highlighted during the technical sessions of the HQ ANC event, titled Dweep Diksha Dialogue. It is now an annual feature. That DRR is being discussed professionally and more often by India’s armed forces is one of the most heartening developments since the disaster. For this, both the political and military leadership need to be credited. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) is supporting this knowledge quest in earnest for a disaster-resilient India.
The writer is a member of the National Disaster Management Authority
The Keechakupuram shipyard in Tamil Nadu after the tsunami. (Express Archives) 
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