Tsunami warning system tested around the Pacific
Tsunami warning system tested around the Pacific
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Wednesday, 17, May 2006 10:55
More than 30 countries have taken part in an international exercise to test a tsunami warning system in the Pacific Ocean.
Exercise Pacific Wave began yesterday after a mock alert was issued from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.
Countries taking part in the drill were subsequently warned that a fictitious earthquake, measuring 9.2 on the richter scale, had struck near the coast of Chile, creating a tsunami that was rapidly travelling across the eastern Pacific.
Experts at the warning centre in Hawaii, which co-ordinated the exercise, said the drill was designed to measure how well tsunami alerts were delivered to various governments and subsequently relayed through local emergency systems.
Head of the warning centre, Charles McCreery, said the interest shown by those countries involved in the exercise had been promising.
"Even before the exercise started, we considered it to be a success in the sense of having so much interest from all the countries," said Mr McCreery.
"Showing their willingness to co-operate, that's something we have never seen before," he added.
A spokeswoman for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the AFP news agency that almost every country contacted by the warning centre following the exercise had received the simulated alert.
A further mock test of the tsunami warning system is taking place this morning, with a second drill alerting officials in Thailand, Malaysia and American Samoa to an imaginary earthquake to the north of the Philippines.
The countries are staging tsunami evacuations as part of the exercise.
Although a Pacific tsunami warning system has been in operation since 1965, the exercises represent the largest test of the procedures since their inception.
The drill may serve as a model for further tests in the Indian Ocean, where experts are developing an early warning system in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami that left more than 220,000 people dead after an earthquake struck off Indonesia.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that two actual earthquakes struck during yesterday’s tsunami test.
No casualties have been reported following either the magnitude 7.4 quake which struck north off New Zealand or the magnitude 6.8 quake which occurred off Indonesia.
